9. A Year in the Life of Elizabeth Gaskell’s House
Posted
6th December 2024
in 10 year Anniversary, blog
Week 9. 1 – 6 December 2024
Another Sunday on the rota for me, but this one was officially our start on Christmas so there was the tree to decorate, Christmas jumpers to be admired and mince pies to test. It was also a much busier day for visitors – although busy for us, still means quiet in comparison to other historic houses at this time of year! Several visitors commented how nice and calm it was in our Tea Room away from the hustle and bustle of the Christmas markets. I managed to catch-up with one of ex-trustees, did a shift in the Tea Room and parcelled up several online shop orders.
Monday was a day for meetings and discovering the camera on my laptop has broken – which topically made me look like a character from Wicked! I ran the various sales reports for November (visitor numbers were pretty much the same as last year) and looked at the online shop sales for the month. Notes that the top seller for November was the Suffragette Christmas decoration. Adam, one of the volunteers, came in to deck the Victorian rooms and the Tea Room with holly and ivy. Thank you Adam.
On Tuesday we welcomed two primary classes (60 children in total) from William Hulme Grammar School in the morning and afternoon – thank you to the three volunteers who led the sessions. In between welcoming the children and helping to move them through the House, I posted a blog written by one of our volunteers about a new book in our collection (Vol 3 of Howitt’s Journal) which features Christmas Storms & Sunshine by Elizabeth. I also managed to plan in a few other upcoming blogs written by other volunteers and drafted a news story to announce our new Trustees. I also had a chat with our computer support company and we agreed I needed to buy a new camera for my laptop as it wasn’t worth fixing.
Wednesday was the Swinton Grove Community Christmas light switch on and we had free entry for M13 residents. It was a lovely busy Wednesday – much busier than in recent weeks both with local people and those from further afield – including one of our online/social media supporters who was on holiday from California! One visitor shared her memories of living opposite the House as a child and remembered helping to tidy the garden when the Harper family lived in the House. We also had two visitors (parked in the accessible parking space) who discovered they had a flat tyre when they came to leave. Thankfully all was resolved and they waited for help in our warm Tea Room. Added to this, Lucy fitted in a wedding show round for a potential wedding in 2026.
Shout out to Rosie, one of our volunteers, who brought in a tray of homemade cinnamon buns as this was her last volunteering shift before Christmas. They were delicious and I may have had more than one!
Wednesday evening was our final online talk of the year – a festive themed talk looking at how the working classes celebrated Christmas during the Victorian period. Not quite as popular as some of our other talks, but it was a good turnout.
Thursday was quieter visitor wise, but we were able to continue training some of our newer volunteers in various roles and we added a second set of fairy lights to the tree (donated by Jane), which made it look much better. I made a start on looking at the visitor data for last year – in terms of postcodes and the tickets types purchased. This information will feed into our updated audience development plan, which helps us plan activity for the next 12 months.
On Friday morning we had the twice-yearly gutter clear – this is a vital operation and involves a cherry picker and two people in harnesses who go onto the roof of the main building. It is surprising how much gunk and leaves get caught up in the gutters and we learnt the hard way in July 2023 when we had a leak that it needs to be done twice a year. I continued working on the audience development plan, shared the news story about our Young Trustees appointment and sent another batch of our popular bookmark-leaflets off to print.
Sally Jastrzebski-Lloyd
