As Project Curator, I have had the chance of a lifetime being part of a conservation team working to rescue the house from centuries of damp and decay, to transform it into a place where its history can be celebrated and enjoyed. This spring we opened the first restored show rooms and the new Conservation Studio to repair and restore precious items from Knole's collection.
Our challenge has been enormous. When the project began we had over 6 acres of leaking roof, mouldering collections, an electrical supply that could barely power the conservation team’s vacuum cleaners and lighting so dim our visitors couldn’t see our paintings. It was clear we had a lot of work to do.
After repairing and weatherproofing the building’s exterior, we turned our attention indoors, to the care and conservation of Knole’s extraordinary interiors and collections. Knole is particularly famous for its elaborately decorated rooms created by royal master craftsmen, a rare and fragile collection of Stuart furnishings and works by 18th-century portraitists Sir Joshua Reynolds and Thomas Gainsborough.
Inevitably, as the years have passed the collection has become worn and faded. Robert Sackville-West, the current occupant of Knole, describes the atmosphere as one of ‘faded magnificence…that, like the gilding on its paintings, smoulders rather than sparkles’.
We cherish the antique atmosphere at Knole, but gentle ageing was being overtaken by accelerated deterioration. The lack of environmental control in the historic show rooms was creating the perfect climate for moulds and pests to thrive, while dust was becoming a cement-like layer on the textiles.
To tackle the problem we have installed an environmentally controlled heating system in the show rooms, opened up floors and wall panelling for new wiring and upgraded fire protection, and added insulation.