46. A Year in the Life of Elizabeth Gaskell’s House
Posted
19th September 2025
in 10 year Anniversary, blog, Blogs & News, Gaskell House Blogs
15-21 September 2025
Another one of those weeks where our feet haven’t touched the ground or that’s how it felt. We were a team member down for most of the week and boy did I feel it. It felt like there was an avalanche of emails, reports to write, exciting happenings and general stuff* this week – which was tempered slightly by lower visitor numbers, a message from Richard Armitage and dramatic rainfall!
On a positive note I had a very positive meeting with the National Lottery Heritage Fund on Tuesday and got to meet one of our very lovely donors and supporters, Nancy from the USA, on Thursday. In fact we had three groups of visitors from the USA on Thursday (coincidentally there was a state visit from that other American at exactly the same time!). Anyway, Nancy has been a huge supporter of the House and has been involved in Gaskell research for many, many years, More recently she has been donating books from her extensive personal collection of first/early editions of Elizabeth’s works to the House. I can’t wait to share images from a first edition of Cranford she donated/ brought with her this week – it is within two beautifully crafted boxes, which is frankly screaming for an unboxing video!
In other social media news, volunteer Liz P, managed to get Richard Armitage (aka Mr Thornton from the BBC adaptation of North and South) to sign and a write a dedication (‘To Elizabeth Gaskell’s House with love’) in his new book, which of course I had to share on social!
The press release about our mystery book event – A Novel Introduction – went out at the start of the week, which was picked up by the Museum and Heritage Advisor website. Hopefully there will be more on this in the coming weeks.
Thursday night was our first online talk of the autumn season – At Home with Elizabeth Gaskell (jokingly sub-titled god knows how Elizabeth ever found time to write). Thank you Lynda and Diane Duffy. Speaking of Diane we also got notification that her TV appearance – talking railway journeys with Michael Portillo – is next week!
*other stuff this week involved sorting out pressure washing the paths ahead of the winter, getting our annual PAT test booked in and trying and failing once again to get the lift contract maintenance sorted.
And so it’s Friday again. We have a wedding tomorrow at the House and a volunteer recruitment fair in Manchester city centre (Really hoping the forecast rain is not quite as bad as the BBC weather app is predicting.) And on Sunday we are open as usual.
Sally Jastrzebski-Lloyd
