It’s November 1859 – and Elizabeth Gaskell is in Whitby
It's Sunday October 30th 1859 and Elizabeth Gaskell is finishing a long letter to her friend, Charles Eliot Norton which she'd started five days before. She writes: I have missed the Saturday mail, - & Meta, Julia & I are going for
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Perks of Volunteering
A ‘perk’ of being a volunteer at 84 Plymouth Grove is the programme of development activities organised by the House. This summer there was a major exhibition about John Ruskin, starting in London and then at the Millennium Gallery in Sheffield. A
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A visit to the archive at the Manchester Lit & Phil
As a member of The Manchester Literary and Philosophical Society, I had been asked to write a piece on our illustrious past member Ernest Rutherford. So there I was at Church House going through the Society’s files when my magpie brain suddenly
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Volunteers on Tour : Samlesbury Hall
It was a highly entertaining day out for Elizabeth Gaskell's House volunteers at Samlesbury Hall in Lancashire this week, where we were treated to a tour by Janey the witch. Convincingly made up with acne and very bad teeth, Janey brilliantly conjured
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John Ruskin’s Cravat
Aconite There is a deep blue aconite coming to the end of its flowering in the garden at present. It is almost the same shade of blue as the cravat worn by John Ruskin in the portrait painted of him in 1879
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