Last week, myself and the other HLF trainees got the opportunity to visit the Elizabeth Gaskell House in Manchester for a tour of the building. The house is currently closed to the public because of major building and restoration work, so it was a privilege to be allowed to have a look inside! We had a lot of photographs taken on our visit, this one shows all the HLF trainees, alongside Aimee who manages the funding for HLF, and trustees of the Gaskell house.
Elizabeth Gaskell (1810-65) was a skilled novelist and biographer, creating popular works such as ‘Cranford’, ‘Mary Barton’ and ‘North and South’. She is also known as a prolific letter writer, and was part of a wider community of writers including Charles Dickens and Emily Bronte. Her husband, William, was a reverend and also enjoyed writing. I have been doing a little bit of volunteer research about the Gaskell’s book collection, as part of a project to restore the library. I have learnt quite a lot about Elizabeth, so this tour provided me with a further insight into the family and their home. Elizabeth wrote her most popular works while living at Plymouth Grove, therefore the house is hugely historically and culturally significant.
The Gaskell house has certainly had an interesting history. Described as a regency, suburban villa, it was built sometime in the 1830’s on Plymouth Grove, Manchester. It was part of a development of housing built for the middle classes. At the time, the area would have been an escape from the busy, industrial Manchester streets. The house had a considerable amount of land surrounding it, and it is believed that Elizabeth even kept a cow! The Gaskell’s would have had neighbours with similarly large properties.
The Gaskell’s moved in to 1850, and was occupied by the family until the death of Elizabeth and William’s daughter Meta in 1913. The house was bought by Manchester University in the 1960’s and became a centre for the International Society. The downstairs was used for university activities and a cafe – analysis of the paint work revealed some very gaudy colours! While the upstairs was student accommodation. To get the most use from the available space, the rooms were split diagonally. At some point the exterior of the house was painted pink, which led to it being referred too locally as ‘the pink house’. University ownership of the building was beneficial, as many of the surrounding buildings no longer survive – it is most likely thanks to the university that the property is still standing.
In 2004, the building was purchased by the Manchester Historic Buildings Trust. The trust has pursued applications for funding, and has succeeded in securing very large grants from the Heritage Lottery Fund. It certainly hasn’t been plain sailing though. In 2011, the house suffered a significant loss of lead on the roof because of theft. Building regulations from English Heritage used to be more rigid than they are now, in specifying that only lead could be used on the building’s roof. After further losses, it was agreed that a cheaper, non-valuable replacement could be used instead. It was interesting to hear about the challenges to restoring the house.
At present, the outside of the house looks beautiful, it has been restored to a stone colour, and certainly commands attention along Plymouth Grove. The house is currently still being worked on by builders, and during our tour we tried to avoid getting in their way too much! Much of the house had scaffolding and other building materials dotted around, but in some parts of the house there was paint going up on the wall which was lovely to see. The decoration is being restored using historic paint from Little Green paint company based in Manchester, the wallpaper is also being sourced fairly locally, as are the carpets. The carpets will be extremely bold and patterned, which may surprise visitors. Interpretation will be kept to a minimum throughout the house, and the main areas of signage will be in the drawing room, which will welcome visitors and explain about the Gaskell family and their home.
I can’t wait to visit the house once it opens to see how it all comes together. The house will also have a large tea room, which is of course particularly exciting as we all need tea, coffee and cake to refuel after a wander around a museum.
Behind the bookcase 