Marilyn Hood is looking forward to the festive season more than ever this year – it will be Marilyn’s first Christmas as Retail Manager for the gift shop and plant/garden shop at Belton House.
She’s determined to make this a memorable and enjoyable shopping experience for visitors to Belton, and one that really reflects the joys of the festive season.
The gift shop and plant/garden shop are nestled in the courtyard at Belton, where Christmas events are also staged – the perfect environment for really getting into the spirit of shopping for quality gifts. As Marilyn says, 'We offer a stress-free environment away from the hustle and bustle of the high street, making shopping a real pleasure.' Setting the festive scene is a really important consideration for Marilyn:
'Festive music sets the scene well, but like the quality goods on offer for sale, we need to ensure that the music choice is tasteful too – so it’s a loop of Christmas carols for us rather than some of the more popular Christmas songs you might hear elsewhere…'
Although the stock for the shop is all centrally distributed by main retail team based in Wiltshire, the National Trust prides itself on supporting local suppliers, and this year is no exception. According to Marilyn,
'We have a fabulous selection of new suppliers of Christmas stock this year, including hand-made chocolates from a Lincoln-based specialist, Little Treats. They visited us on site before Christmas to show us their goods so we can see and, more importantly, TASTE the quality! Their exquisite hand-tied gifts are beautifully packaged and are absolutely mouthwatering – the truffles are simply irresistible, made with real Belgian chocolate and including their speciality cappuccino flavour. This year, we’re also selling chocolates flavoured with Christmas pudding, champagne and Baileys.'
Quality is of paramount importance, and the shop often offers tasters of the various products on offer, so shoppers can ‘try before they buy’. For example, another local supplier to the shop is Nottinghamshire-based Mr Pitchfork’s Pickles (and yes, that is his real name!), and visitors to the shop can sample his tasty pickles, chutneys and jams, including apple and beetroot chutney, strawberry and champagne jam and mandarin and Cointreau marmalade – all specially gift wrapped for Christmas.
Some Christmas stock arrives in the shop early, as Marion explains: 'We get our Christmas cards and calendars early as we find that they sell well during the school summer holidays, when a lot more families have time to visit. But the main festive gift displays go on show in October, which is when Christmas really starts for me – unpacking the festive stock is just like unwrapping presents. The smell of the cloves and cinnamon pot pourri instantly puts you in the festive spirit. We also have a beautiful range of scented soaps from a Lincolnshire company, Soap of the Earth – from raspberry ripple to a cook’s soap designed to remove the strong smell of onion and garlic from your skin after cooking.'
Along with a wide range of gifts, the plant/garden shop offers an eye-catching selection of decorations, pot-grown Christmas trees and fresh and artificial wreaths. Although the Christmas trees aren’t local, they are grown by a Norfolk-based company is peat-free compost.
The Christmas season always brings a lot of visitors to Belton House, so how does Marilyn cope with the additional workload? She explains:
'We do take on casual staff to help with the Christmas rush. A student who helped during the summer was so good we’ve asked to come back over Christmas to help out. But our staff really love the festive season and consider being here as an extension of their own celebrations. This will be the first year that we’ll be open from Boxing Day until 4 January – but so far no one is complaining!'
'Afternoons can be really busy – visitors usually leave their shopping to the end of their visit, so we can quite often get a coach load of shoppers descending on the shop en masse. This makes the last hour of each day very busy, but we do everything we can to serve them as quickly as possible. All the visitors have gone by 5pm, so then all we have to do is cash up, turn all the lights off, lock everything up – and breathe a sign of relief. Time to go home and put my feet up.'
The gift shop and plant/garden shop will be open from 3 November until 21 December from 12 noon until 4pm on Friday, Saturday and Sunday. They will then re-open on Boxing Day until 4 January from 12 noon until 4pm, when the sale will be on.
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