It takes a village

It appears I have added too many pretty pictures over the years and have totally run out of storage space on my WordPress, so to save paying lots of money every year or having to delete my old posts I have started up another blog, to continue where this one has left off.

My new blog address is: http://viewfrommyattic.blogspot.co.uk/

It is quite good timing really because I can record all my new adventures on my new blog and keep my memories here on my old blog intact.

I have also now learnt to reduce my photo sizes (yes I know Mother, you told me to do this months ago, well I got there eventually) so this one should last me eons, or maybe at least until retirement.

The first two post are already up on the new blog, all about my holiday to Norway over Christmas.

I can still put text posts on this blog so I shall put up links to new blog posts on the other side, but I hope you will all pop over to the new blog and that you continue to enjoy my adventures in the world of heritage!

Thanks for bearing with me, thank you for reading and I hope to see you soon!

Changes

Posted on January 15, 2016 by Ellen-Scarlett

Hello All, long time no see! I know there has been distinct hole in my blog posts recently, but with good reason, I promise.

Big changes have happened in my little world over the last few months and so I have been focusing all my energy on that.

And the big news is: I have started a new job!

I am now Chapel & Collections Officer at Clumber Park, another fabulous National Trust property in the Midlands.

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This is a big step up from my post as Conservation Assistant at Hardwick Hall, and a huge role looking after several collections and becoming head of my own little department!

I loved being at Hardwick so much but even so I have been looking for jobs for a few months now, wanting to progress my career. This job is an amazing opportunity to learn new skills and really use all that I have already learnt from my years with the Trust so far.

Clumber Park is a beautiful, huge estate near Worksop, that was once the seat of The Duke’s of Newcastle. Though the mansion no longer stands on the site all the surrounding buildings still stand, including the focus of my role; the stunning Chapel of Saint Mary the Virgin.

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This role is already proving to be full of excitement, interest and new challenges, and I am enjoying every minute of it. I started in December, in a the deep end with Christmas events and lots of carol singing!

Now the Chapel is closed for the deep clean and I have lots of events and projects on the horizon, Clumber is going to be keeping me very busy.

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So now I will be back to regular blogging from my new home, (and on my new blog: viewfrommyattic.blogspot.co.uk) but in the meantime have a look at this article I wrote for the Clumber Park webpage about what I’m going to be up to for the next few weeks. See you all soon!

A Halloween full of Heritage

Posted on November 3, 2015 by Ellen-Scarlett

I love Halloween, any excuse to dress up and eat sweets is a very good idea in my opinion! This year at Hardwick we the House Team wanted to work closely with the Community Engagement Team and make a really great offer across the whole estate for families over half term.

So a lot of trawling Pinterest later we had decorated two rooms in the Hall, and if you ask me they looked spook-tacular (he he)! We dressed to Duke’s Room and the Still Room, but unfortunately we had a bit of a disaster in the Duke’s Room when it flooded (more on that in another post). However before that point we had a lot of fun putting the rooms together and getting creative.

There were carved pumpkins in the Stableyard and spiders leading visitors through the gardens and house, potions brewing in the garden and Halloween crafts happening all week, which were a huge hit with the families. We were so busy, we had crowds of children making Halloween ghost puppets and spooky mobiles.

One of my colleagues did a fantastic job creating this picture of Mary Queen of Scotts, photo-shopped from the painting that hangs in our Long Gallery, the perfect spot for a spooky selfie!

I helped out with the crafts for a couple of days, which I really enjoyed and it took me back to my days of being a Cub Scout leader. When I was a Brownie evening where we were doing crafts like these were my favorite so it was really nice to help out with the kids activities and seeing them enjoying themselves, and my colleagues’ creativity and hard work paying off. It was also a good excuse to dust off my Halloween head-wear and wear horns and cat ears to work.

I spent the week before Halloween making decorations, haunted books and putting heads in jars. A few simple ideas from Pinterest but they all looked really effective! The slime was brilliant but I think the head in the jar was my favorite, and people’s reactions to it were perfect.

I spent Halloween night at Leeds Armouries, at their event ‘Night of the Living Dead’ which was so creative, and quite scary too! I decided to dress up as zombie butt-kicker Wichita, from ‘Zombieland’, basically an excuse to wear my new black boots and leather jacket, and was accompanied for the evening by a mad scientist, an escaped convict and a Kerry.

The event started in the evening, which meant we got to be in Leeds Royal Armouries after hours! The armouries is in a really nice area on the waterfront and it looked so pretty at night-time.

First off we were briefed in the War Cinema and suddenly a very fierce army lady came charging in shouting orders at us, I was scared already. Then we were taken on a walk through the War Gallery, which was unfortunately infested with the un-dead!

It stared off with one zombie here and one zombie there but soon enough they were popping out from behind every corner and jumping out behind us. I may have screamed, once or twice, but after getting out alive I kind of just wanted to go around again, it was so much fun!

After our ordeal we were treated to cocktails and special effects make up! I was really looking forward to this part and the make up artists were fab. All the zombies we had seen earlier had been very convincing and now it was my turn.

We all tried out a slightly different type of make up and then met up with my friend Sadie, who had been infected earlier and had been one of the zombies jumping out at us. I think she looks amazingly scary, I’ve never been happier to see someone covered in blood.

Once we were all zombie up we sat in for a screening of the original zombie movie ‘Night of the Living Dead’. I had never seen this one before and even though I don’t usually love black and white movies and it wasn’t what I expected, especially the ending, but I enjoyed it.

It was the first year Leeds Armouries had run such an event and I hope it’s not the last. I loved getting to be there in the dark and having such a different experience in a museum I have visited many times. It must have been a huge undertaking for them but I think the staff might have enjoyed it just as much as we did.

So all in all Halloween this year meant indulging in my favorite things, craft, creativity, heritage, zombie movies and spending time with my friends! Hope you all had a frightfully good Halloween, whatever you were doing!