Heritage and Conservation in Historic Houses

When I was sixteen years old, I changed my mind about my chosen career path. For the last fourteen years (yes, fourteen) I had desperately wanted to become a midwife, but over time this dream had faded and became something I was expected to do, not what I wanted to do.

Although my mother didn't take this sudden change too well at the start, she came around to the idea when I decided that I wanted to work at the British Museum. A subject of many school trips, I had always loved visiting - seeing the artefacts we had been studying in my Classics and Ancient History GCSE and A-Level classes, the friezes and the ancient statues. I’d gone on a school trip in Year 11 to Sorrento, Italy, and fell even more in love with Pompeii, Herculaneum, and archaeological sites in general. It seemed like a no-brainer: the only problem was how to get there.

As a person who has always loved history, it was surprising when we realised that I had never visited our local National Trust property, apart from another school trip aged nine. I applied to become a volunteer, thinking that it could be something for me to pop on my CV, maybe make a couple of friends, use it as a stepping-stone to university. What I did on my Sundays was sorted for me.

What I didn’t anticipate was the way I would fall head over heels in love with the property. Never mind the British Museum, this was what I wanted to do. I had to spend my days surrounded by these beautiful objects, engaging visitors with their stories, conserving and hopefully one day helping to restore the history of the house. How could I ever leave this place to go to university? I decided that I had to stay in the National Trust volunteering pool until I could get a job, and still to this day (a whole eighteen months later) I dream of the house I work at employing me full or even part time.

After just over a year of volunteering I left school and started doing four days a week at the property. I was introduced to new volunteers, new methods of conservation, new National Trust staff (who were a lot higher up the food chain than I could ever get without a degree) and even had a slightly strange day where I got to go to the local archives to search through some incredible papers for exhibition research.

However, what is really the biggest part of the whole thing for me is the conservation aspect. My (hopefully) future job title would most likely be Conservation Assistant (most National Trust properties, if not all, have at least one) which tells you how crucial it is for properties like ours. Others have a ‘preservation not conservation’ approach, which means instead of maintaining a house as close as possible to the original, like we do, some houses would rather ‘freeze in time’, and let the natural decay remain. One good example of this method is Calke Abbey, in Derbyshire, which allows the decay that was already present in the house to stay but while they prevent any further damage they also do nothing to reverse it, which provides an incredible insight of what can happen if we don’t do the conservation we need to!

My absolute favourite things within the house are the paintings (complete with frames) and probably the metals as well. My least favourite things are probably the spiders (although I only hate the big ones and I’m definitely getting better with them!) and the sheer chaos of 1000 visitors or more on the busy days!

And that leads me into this blog! I’ve loved writing since I was little (and conservation since I was big) and what better time that New Year to start combining the two and hopefully inspiring others to either visit heritage properties or maybe get involved. Often a local property will have varying types of volunteering opportunities and I recommend to everyone that they do anything from working in the house to the gardens, the shop, the café, visitor welcome, whatever suits you best. I implore you to visit and support these properties as well; a lot of them rely heavily on visitors and/or donations to preserve the history of the UK. My property has limited funding and so membership sign ups and donations really do help us. And if you’re a National Trust member, consider popping in to get your card scanned at your local property or park. It costs nothing other than the yearly membership cost and earns money for the site every time it’s scanned.

Let’s hope this lasts longer than my other resolutions usually do…