1. A Year in the Life of Elizabeth Gaskell’s House
Posted
9th October 2024
in 10 year Anniversary, blog, Blogs & News, Gaskell House Blogs
Over the next year I am going to try to give a week-by-week update of what’s happening at the House during its anniversary year via this blog.
Inspired by Elizabeth Gaskell’s letters, I hope to write about the trivial and the domestic, as well as about the big events and celebrations. I hope to share the good bits as well as the more challenging realities of working in a small, but wonderfully special literary House and museum. The experience of working on the 10-year anniversary has reinforced the importance of documenting and sharing what we do at the House – which is another reason I’m doing this. We discovered so many things through oral history interviews that were not written down or commonly known, and could have easily been lost and forgotten (despite it being only 20 years ago). Hopefully this diary will be something that a future team can look back on at our 25 year anniversary!
Week 1. 30 September – 6 October
It’s a cliché but it has been a rollercoaster few weeks culminating in the launch event and AGM on Sunday.
We (myself, Katy, Adam and Frank) installed the Exhibition, which includes several pictures, a very fragile letter (with an interesting story) and Frank’s bright blue hard hard. Then Katy and I spent an absurd amount of time trying to remove smears from the exhibition cases. Whilst this was going on, the office printer decided this was the week it would cease to work, which threw a medium-sized spanner in the works and we had to print various things at home including the object captions.
Added to this, the end of September/early October is also a tricky time for volunteer availability, we find a lot of our long-term volunteers take holidays at this time of year and we do not have quite enough student volunteers trained as they have only just started back at university. So staff have to fill the gaps, mainly covering the Tea Room and ticketing roles. This can be quite stressful when you’ve got an Inbox of emails that need urgent attention, but on the flip side it is a good opportunity to serve, and chat with visitors, who generally are very lovely.
Sunday finally arrived and all went wonderfully well – the only very minor incident was that the fridge had been turned-up which caused some of the bottles of wine for the launch event to freeze! The AGM followed a series of short talks and live music in the Drawing Room which went smoothly. New trustees were welcomed and those stepping down were thanked. (for details of our new trustees )
Finally with the AGM complete, the wine was opened, and the Exhibition officially celebrated. Natalie, one of our ex-volunteers (who also got married at the House in 2019), and now professional cake baker, supplied a suitable cake for the occasion. Alex (our Chair) and Janet Allan MBE (who led the campaign to save the House) said a few words and the cake was cut. We sent pretty much everyone home with a slice or two. If you want to know more about the Exhibition click here.
Personally, it was an emotional afternoon. I had a few tears saying thank you to some of the trustees who were stepping down, and I received some very kind words from people attending the launch. At the end of the day I felt very proud that we had done justice and credited the efforts and hard work that went into saving and restoring the House.
Sally Jastrzebski-Lloyd
Director
