museum

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.

As part of the centenary of Stockport Library, the large glass dome in the lending library has been undergoing some intensive restoration and cleaning work. It is now finished – all sparkly and looking lovely. Last week, as the builders were taking down the scaffolding that was required to clean the dome, the library was closed to the public for a few days. This gave us an opportunity to catch up on some jobs and also have a staff visit to the museum store! It was great that the whole team were able to go! I really enjoy museums, having worked at Manchester Museum and the Museum of Science and Industry previously, and always making a beeline to the museum’s when visiting somewhere new. There’s something so exciting about going behind the scenes and exploring what objects can be found, so I was looking forward to seeing how the objects are stored in Stockport.

Lauren, the museum’s curatorial trainee gave us all a tour around the store. She did a fantastic job and it was great to have a nosy around! Lauren showed us several different objects that she found interesting, she clearly has a passion for her subject. Highlights included a selection of hats, as Stockport is famed for its hatting industry it was great to see some examples from Christy’s and Lock and Co (the Hat Museum currently has a Lock and Co exhibition so I will have to go for a visit soon.) We were also shown and elephants tooth which was humongous! And a piece of work by LS Lowry which was impressive!

Other items which you would not necessarily expect to find in Stockport included an Ancient Egyptian mummy’s hand. I remember this hand vividly from visiting Vernon Park museum as a child where it used to be on display. Now that all museum objects have been removed from Vernon Park, the hand is back in the stores, hopefully it will be placed on display once more for other children to enjoy (or be rather scared by!).

After our tour of the store, Lauren showed us a recent donation that had turned out to be a hidden gem. The item had been described by the donator as a suitcase containing an army uniform, but it turned out to contain much more. A WW2 solider had kept a vast array of documents and photographs related to his experience during the war. There were also badges, medals, books – there was so much that a whole exhibition could be put on based around him.

Once the tour was finished, we went into the staff office and I was very pleased to meet Gilbert the dog! We also had a nosy in the museum library, and then went downstairs to look at the museum’s work rooms and garage – we also got to say hello to the museum’s technical trainee, Katie . It was great to get to see the museum’s store, and understand more about how it works.