Our blog post cover everything that happens at Elizabeth Gaskell’s House from the stories discovered about objects and furnishings, to family connections and past residents. You can read about the garden and the plants we grow as well as the volunteering experience we offer to our brilliant team. The majority of the posts are written by volunteers.
A Visit to Chawton – From One Literary House to Another
“Our Chawton home how much we find Already in it, to our mind; And how convinced that when complete It will all other Houses beat, That ever have been made or mended, With rooms concise or rooms distended.” Jane Austen
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Reading the Nineteenth Century
Over the last four months, Sherry Ashworth has been running a reading course at the House - Reading the Nineteenth Century. We've read four Victorian novels, not only for the stories - though these have been exciting - or for their literary
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A Home not a Museum
For the Victorians, the museum was a space set apart, where otherworldly objects were exhibited neatly arranged in glass cabinets. Displaying a collection like this seeks to highlight the curiosity and strangeness of an object by isolating it from the context in
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Promises kept
The granny's bonnets flowered as they promised last week to do, the azaleas and camassias jointly added a vibrant blast of colour, a small rhododendron made itself known and the judas tree could not be ignored. The gardeners (mere humans) weeded, trimmed
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What a difference a week makes!
"..it was a very still, quiet day, I remember, overhead; and the lilacs were all in flower, so I suppose it was spring." Cranford. Chapter 6. It was a busy day for the gardeners. The good weather has brought everything on; the
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