Let’s start with the fact that the house is really cold, and asking our lovely room guides to look after our visitors at these temperatures is just not on. The house team keeps warm with layers of National Trust fleeces and plenty of enthusiastic cleaning.
A head for heights
This is the only opportunity we have each year to erect the scaffolding in the Great Hall as well as on the Staircase. This means we can clean the paintings, panelling, armoury and taxidermy that we can’t usually reach when we’re open. If dust and webs accumulate for too long they become more difficult to remove and we need to ensure that we're looking after every single object in the house.
The house team are all trained to put up the scaffolding, every piece being brought in to the house and erected carefully to ensure that there's no damage to anything en route.
Follow one of the team up the ladders in this video for a very different view of the Great Hall.