The Manor Reborn

Having watched the BBC’s ‘Manor Reborn’ with great interest (and a lot of talking to the telly and saying ‘oooh, I wouldn’t do it like that!’) I was dead excited to actually visit Avebury Manor during half term.  Avebury’s a funny place, there seems to be nothing there except about 6 houses, a pub, a church, and an awful lot of National Trust property. There’s all the land with the standing stones – pretty amazing and well worth a visit in themselves – a museum in a barn and a smaller museum in a stable, the manor itself, and of course a cafe and a shop. We got our tickets, and then loitered in the shop until it was time to go in. They were running a system of timed entry, to prevent congestion within the manor!

A friendly volunteer gave us a little talk at the gates, basically outlining the premise of the BBC project and explaining that rather than using original, old furnishings the house has been filled with copied (or faked?) furniture based on the styles of the period. He told us to sit on the chairs and lie on the beds, but to treat the house as though it belonged to a dear friend, which was a nice sentiment. And appropriate, too, because for many the National Trust does feel like a trusted friend, maybe a little predictable but always there. This property, though, aimed to shed that traditional image of ‘don’t touch’ signs and cream teas.

It worked. My Nan said she’d never been in a museum where people laughed so much, and talked to not only their companions but other visitors and the Trust volunteers.  We pretended to drink from pewter goblets in the Tudor hall, ground coffee in the kitchen and joked about who should do the huge pile of washing up that was stacked on the worktops, flicked through The Times and watched a young volunteer and an elderly visitor play billiards in the Edwardian Billiard Room. Me and Mum took off our boots and lay down on the four poster bed, drew the curtains and imagined sleeping there. It was a bit lumpy, but cosy with the curtains drawn and the mattress smelt pleasantly of straw. Nana laughed at us, but we started a trend and the next visitors to the room followed suit as grandma got onto the four poster and her little grandson made himself comfy on the servant’s truckle bed.

The kitchen sideboard, full of authentic looking clutter!

Reed matting in the Tudor hall, made last summer using centuries old methods.

Having a little sit down in front of the hand painted Chinese wallpaper, imagining myself as an eighteenth century lady of taste!

The Tudor bed, a bit rumpled after me and mum had tested to see how comfy it was!

It was great fun, and the workmanship that had gone into the objects was much admired – particularly the painted Chinese wallpaper, and the rush matting in the Tudor room. But although the downstairs rooms felt real and lived in – or at least like a well-furnished film set – upstairs was less impressive. There was little furniture apart from the beds, and the rooms were hardly dressed with props and historical clutter at all. There was a feeling that at some point time or money (or both) had run out, and these rooms upstairs had suffered. It was also difficult – and would I imagine be even harder for a foreign visitor, a child, or even just someone without a pretty good knowledge of British history – to understand the era of each room, and why those times had been chosen. There was no interpretation except some laminated sheets, which were very informative and useful – Nana said they had just the right amount of information, and pictures which showed you what it was talking about – but looked a bit cheap and were easily ignored or just not even noticed at all. For the Manor to really work, I think they need a high quality interpretation panel in each room describing the people that would have lived in it, and the period in which it was set. And to either light the fires or turn the heating up – it was a cold day and was not much warmer inside.

Taking a break 1930s style, moments before the outbreak of World War Two.

Despite it’s flaws, Avebury Manor was a fun morning out, and more importantly it was different to the usual National Trust experience. I don’t know how much ‘history’ we learned, but the smelling the straw in the four poster bed was something you couldn’t get in books, or read on a wall panel. The most memorable and emotional moment was at the end of our visit when, as we were having a sit down in the 1930s living room, the wireless which had been innocuously playing in the corner went quiet, and then suddenly, deadly serious. Me, my mother and my grandmother sat in silence as we listened to Neville Chamberlain announce that Britain was at war with Germany, and a shiver went down my spine. For me and Mum, it was amazing and horrifying to feel a tiny fraction of how it must have felt on that day in 1939, to try and place ourselves in history and imagine how it would have been. For Nana, she was hearing again what she actually heard on the radio as a young girl, reliving the day when so much changed.

 The BBC's wesbsite for The Manor Reborn televison programmes:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b017m16v

The National Trust web page for Avebury:

http://www.nationaltrust.org.uk/Avebury/

Take a tour of Bradford's heritage

Today was the first day of the new program of volunteer led tours of the Bradford Industrial Museum, and I think it went rather well, if I do say so myself!

Marco, my fellow tour guide, and I, led three tours round the museum, two of the mill owner's house and the back to back cottages, and one of the spinning and weaving galleries. Hopefully we taught the visitors a few new things; I shared my newfound knowledge of the spinning process which I've been revising all week! And we learnt a thing or two ourselves - what a siren suit is, for instance (a warm woollen 'onesie' worn over your PJs when the air raid siren went off), and Marco looked rather embarassed when a group of ladies tried to explain to him what a pawn shop was. They thought his misunderstaning of the term 'pawn' was quite hilarious!

There should be volunteers running tours of the different aspects of the museum every Sunday afternoon from now on, so if you're interested in our industrial heritage, steam power, vintage cars, or simply how people used to live in the olden days, come along and see us at the Industrial Museum in Eccleshill.

Can anyone direct me to the Craven Museum?

Skipton, Saturday Afternoon. Market stalls line the street, the butcher auctions his last few joints and the greengrocers shout ‘50p for a bag o’bananas, any bag, 50p!”. We struggle up the street, and it is literally packed with people out for the afternoon, doing a bit of shopping, and it’ll only get busier between now and Christmas. We reach the Town Hall at the top of the high street, and there’s quite a few people milling in and out to investigate the craft fair that’s advertised outside. The tea and cake is flying out of the kitchen. A few people stop to look at the display boards that spill out from the museum and into the main corridors of the town hall, and I leave Mum in the temporary exhibition of local art (which is peaceful and calm compared to the street outside) and head upstairs to the museum proper.

Silence. Where has everybody gone? I am actually the only person here, until a museum assistant struggles past with a Hoover, says hello, laughs at me playing with the interactive activities for kids, and disappears behind a door marked ‘staff only’. I always wonder what’s behind those doors. This is a really nice local museum, traditional without being stuffy, crammed full of interesting little stories about the area, fascinating objects, and things to play with. I particularly liked the hippopotamus skull sitting on the front desk, silently guarding the staff’s selection of novels and magazines. There’s dressing up clothes, and a microscope with slides for the kids, loads of books, colour sheets and a choice of two museum trails, and with a joyous disregard for health and safety, a real stone quern to turn and grind wheat. My mum failed to ‘supervise me closely’ when I was playing with this (I mean, doing important research) and I got covered in flour, but it was good fun and would make kids think, if just for a second, the sheer amount of effort that went into just feeding a family in ‘the olden days’.

The Craven Museum has had quite a bit of publicity recently, including a full page profile in the Museums Journal, regarding its discovery of a First Folio of Shakespeare’s plays. They must have got some specific funding to display the Folio, as this is the most modern part of the museum. The First Folio has it’s own little shrine, almost, with some information boards telling both the stories of the book itself and it’s importance, and how it came to be here in Skipton. There’s a film narrated by Patrick Stewart (renowned Shakespearean actor/ local lad done good) and a facsimile of the introduction to the First Folio and Macbeth, so that people can turn the pages and have a good read.

All in all, the Craven Museum is a lovely little spot to take a break from all the hustle, bustle and rampant consumerism of the Christmas period, have a sit, have a think, discover something about the area you didn’t know before, entertain your children and be fascinated by the past. But no-one knows it’s there! So please, Craven Museum, get a big sign outside telling people that you exist (and that you’re free) and let them come and see what you have to offer!

A short history?

Is it possible to write a short history of England? Isn't history, by its very nature, really quite long? Or, is it possible to write a short history of England, and for it to be any good?

Simon Jenkins, in reaction against the disconnected history we learn at school, which seems to imply that Henry VIII was followed by Hitler with very little in between, was challenged by his publisher to write a History of England in 55,000 words. Which might sound a lot, but that’s only five and a half undergraduate dissertations, which really isn’t much at all.

At Ilkley Literature Festival on Friday, Jenkins did a very interesting 45 minute talk on his book, a whistle stop tour of English history from 410 and the departure of the Romans, when Jenkins believes England (as opposed to Britain) was really born, to the current coalition government. Before I start to criticise, I must say that I truly believe that there is a real place for simply telling the story of history, for people to know their country’s background and how we came to be where we are today. There’s also great fun in the traditional tales of heroes and villains, good kings and bad kings, Alfred burning the cakes and James hiding up the Oak Tree.

BUT. All history is interpreted by the historian. English history is made up of infinite, related, vastly different stories. And when one man stands up and says ‘this is how it was’, that is very misleading, and quite frankly, not true. Jenkins did, in the question and answer session at the end, acknowledge that when trying to tell such a huge story (or as I see it, collection of interwoven stories) in such a ridiculously short space of time, it is going to become generalised and uncritical. So why do we try and do it? I would argue that there are two types of history, popular and academic. Popular history often still implies that their version of history is ‘how it really was’, while academic history is constantly justifying its conclusions, comparing differing interpretations, and accepting that even primary sources written at the same time about the same event can tell us very different things. The best history writing (or television, or museum exhibition) integrates the two, taking the most academic scholarship into account whilst giving clear, interesting, fun information about the past. And most importantly, it acknowledges that everything we know now about the past is interpreted through both the sources we use and our own modern eyes.

As some comedian (who’s name escapes me) said on the telly last night, all archaeologists really know about the past is that it was full of skeletons who lived underground. The rest is made up. I wouldn’t go quite that far, but he’s got the right idea!

Once Upon A Time...

In a land far far away, there lived a beautiful princess. She had a huge palace full of glittering chandeliers, and servants to fulfil her every wish. Who wouldn’t want to be just like her?

Well me, for one. The tale of Marie Antoinette, her lavish lifestyle, her playing at being a milkmaid, and her ultimate downfall at the hands of revolutionary mob has always fascinated me, ever since reading her story in a Blue Peter annual from about 1972, with pictures of Valerie Singleton at the Petit Trianon dressed as the princess. So, when the chance came to take a detour on a family holiday to visit the Palace of Versailles, I was pretty excited.

We got lost on the way, couldn’t find a car park, and then queued for an hour and a half to get in, but that didn’t diminish the awe I felt at simply being there, standing in front of the ornate gilt gates of the palace, trying to imagine away the crowds, and replace the cars with carriages and the staff with Swiss Guards. And I must admit, even having studied the French Revolution at University, and read a biography (and seen the film) of Marie Antoinette, I found it hard to ignore the constant camera flashes and tourists (I say this like I wasn’t a tourist myself!) elbowing one another aside for the best view. My dad and sister, with no more than a passing interest in history, saw nothing more than a series of rooms full of fancy furniture and old paintings, and were keen to get outside to the fountains and gardens.  

There was one room, though, where I really felt the enormity of past events, and the importance of this place for French, and indeed world, history. In Marie Antoinette’s bedchamber, the audio guide described how the mob stormed the gates, and entered the palace. Marie’s guards, in the room adjoining her bed chamber, fled in fear of the revolutionary Parisians and left the Queen to their mercy. Her huge four poster bed stood before me, as lavish as anyone could wish for, but none of her fine furnishings or loyal (ish) servants could save her now. She fled, through a small door, wallpapered to look like part of the wall. This was the end of her privileged life as Queen of France, and looking at the little, unassuming door that saved her, at least for a little while, it was suddenly easy to picture the Japanese and American tourists (there seemed to be very few European visitors) as the angry mob, baying for blood – or just a good facebook photo – and to imagine her fear as she and her ladies in waiting escaped, not knowing what would happen next.

Marie Antoinette is often seen as a silly girl, too rich and spoilt for her own good. Her (supposed) comment of ‘let them eat cake’ has been used to prove how out of touch she was with the reality of life for many Frenchmen. But this remark had been attributed to many French figures before Marie, to the same effect, and was simply symbolic propaganda against the young queen. She is also ridiculed for her building of a perfectly picturesque hamlet, complete with duck pond, where she could escape from the hustle and bustle of court life and pretend, for a while, to be a simple woman living in the countryside (albeit without any of the hard work involved in a real country life).  After a day of being surrounded by people, of being funnelled through the King’s and Queen’s Apartments in the Palace and standing in really very long queues, the sense of relief and peace when we reached Marie Antoinette’s estates was immense. The beauty of the village she had built, although clearly designed, was much more to my, and my family’s, taste than the Palace itself, and if I had a bottomless purse and had to live a life where courtiers watched my every move, from mealtimes to bedtimes, I think I would build myself a quiet little haven a lot like this one.

So, I don’t think Marie Antoinette was all bad, although obviously she wasn’t perfect either. I think that the Palace of Versailles could be better managed, maybe with a pre-booking system or, even, with a ban on photography in the Palace (the flashes can’t do the centuries old paintings and furnishings any good anyway), to make the visitor feel less stressed and provide a little more breathing space. But in amongst a very busy day there were real moments of beauty, and of connection with the past.

Castle Howard

On Saturday I went on a trip to Castle Howard, with James, who is a good companion for a day out as he both drives and takes photos (two things I am not very good at). I’d been wanting to go to Castle Howard for a while, because it’s mentioned several times in Bill Bryson’s Home, which I read a couple of months ago and really enjoyed. Bryson talked about the landscaped gardens, the follies in the grounds and of course the architecture of the house itself and the famous dome.  And although I had a nice day out, it didn’t quite live up to expectations.

The building is stunning, and the grounds were lovely for a autumnal walk (whilst sneakily eating an apple from the kitchen garden). There was an interesting exhibition about the re-building of a large proportion of the house, including the dome, after a massive fire in 1940. I particularly loved the description of Scarborough schoolgirls, evacuated to Castle Howard during the war, handing books, carpets and paintings out through the windows to save them from the flames. Some of the rooms were never fully restored, at least until first Granada TV and then later BBC films came calling, to film their respective versions of Brideshead Revisited.  The film companies paid to have these interiors fully kitted out in with every period detail – that is every detail that would be visible on camera. The ceilings are exposed, and distinctly modern, while the murals on the walls were painted to suit the tastes of the Catholic (and fictional) Marchmain family, not the Howards.

In contrast to this, the dome, which floats majestically above the main hall of the house, was recreated as to be all but indistinguishable from the original, to the untrained eye. A Canadian artist was commissioned to create an exact copy of Pellegrini’s The Fall of Phaeton which had adorned the underside of the dome – in any other context he would be a forger, but here he is seen as a conservator. The Hall is stunning, but once you become away that it is not ‘real’, not the original eighteenth century building and artworks, it starts to feel a bit strange. Throughout history these huge country houses have been adapted and updated by succeeding generations, but by the 1960s when the dome was rebuilt, this house was not updated in a modern style, but reproduced exactly as it was in its golden age. The stately home was no longer, despite the smattering of framed family snapshots that are around today, a home in the real sense of the world. It was not financially viable, in the post war period, for one family to live here, funding a grand lifestyle off of their land and their name. The home had become a historical monument, and it would have been considered sacrilege to add a 1960s extension instead of restoring the dome.

Today, the house is basically a museum, but one that constantly gives the impression of trying very hard not to be a museum. There is no information on the rooms, their functions, or the people who lived there. The hundreds of artworks are unlabelled, which is frustrating and makes them quite boring, actually, when you don’t know who painted them, who sat for them, which generation Howards collected them and why. Perhaps if I hadn’t been too cheap to buy a guidebook my visit would have been more informative and interesting, but for £13 for an adult ticket I don’t think a few labels on the paintings is too much to ask!