As soon as the House closes to the public each year, a team of volunteers and specialists start ‘putting the House to bed’ for the winter.
As part of this process, the team closely examine the House and the Collection for wear and tear which has been caused over the year, and assess which items need urgent conservation and restoration. Although the house is presented in the era of the 1950’s, many of the items in the house are much older but even the ‘recent’ additions to the House are now decades old.
The team start by cleaning and covering everything by hand in the house. This includes,
Then the team move onto textiles – which we’ll explore in Part 2 – coming soon…..
For the inside track on what it was like to join this team of volunteers – see our Curatorial interns blog from the Charleston Attic.
Don’t forget that nearly all of this work is done by our specialist teams and volunteers, who dust, clean and mend. Please support the Charleston Annual Fund in anyway you can which helps us continue this work and maintain many of the smaller items in the House which can be tricky to get individual funding to support – Find out how you can donate here
Award-winning designer Juliet Sargeant leads an inspirational day of planting design at Charleston.
2021. Legendary folk singer Shirley Collins in a unique collaboration with Brian Catling and Matthew Shaw.
Join Juliet Sargeant to learn about all the chalk-loving plants at Charleston.