Re-hanging tapestries, all in a days work!

As the second phase of external building work has finished we are beginning to reinstate the rooms affected. On Monday the first stage of returning Lady Betty’s Bedroom back to its normal self began with the re-hanging of the two seventeenth century tapestries.

Lady Betty’s Bedroom

Lifting one corner of the bed with lifting straps to get the slider in to place.

Before we could prepare the tapestries for re-hanging, we needed to move Lady Betty’s bed forward to allow us enough room to work and fit in a ladder. To do this we lifted each leg of the bed one by one using lifting straps, to place sliderz under the legs. The sliderz allow us to slide the bed rather than lift it and move it, which creates less physical stress to the structure of the bed.

Sliderz in place under all for bed legs, and its ready to slide forward!

Moving the tapestries from store in the Great Hall to the Ballroom. AS they were on rollers that were 4.5 meters in length, the only place we could store them was under the refectory table in the Hall. The Hall was in use by a school group that day so we moved them to the Cartoon Gallery to prepare them for re-hanging

Textile conservator Zenzie Tinker came along to help us with the tapestries. The first task was to roll the tapestries on to different length rollers. While the tapestries were stored they were on rollers that were 4.5 meters long, this was to make sure they were stable while being held up on textile blocks. The ceiling of Lady Betty’s Bedroom is at least a meter shorter so we needed them on a shorter roller which would allow us to place the roller with tapestry rolled round it upright. This would then enable us to unroll the tapestry along the wall securing the tapestry to the wall with the Velcro as we went.

Preparing the temporary shorter roller.

And we’re ready to (re)roll!

The second attempt at re-rolling on tot he shorter roller, this time starting from scratch with the tapestry fully unrolled.

However best thought out plans don’t always go the way you hope. Initially we began to unroll one tapestry off its long roller and directly on to the new shorter roller. As we had almost completed this task the tapestry had rolled too much at an angle and the ends were spiralling off, which would cause us problems once it was upright. It was decided that we needed to fully unroll the tapestry so that it was flat out on the floor and re-roll the tapestry this way on to the new roller. This meant we could line the roller up better and have better control over the tapestry as we rolled it to prevent it rolling off centre.

Getting the tapestry vertical ready for re-hanging

The second attempt proved to be much easier and with in no time at all the tapestry was rolled and ready to be re-hung. Once the tapestry was positioned upright Zenzie climbed the ladder while other members of the Conservation Team footed the ladder and supported the tapestry. Then little by little the tapestry was unrolled and Zenzie secured the Velcro sewn on the top edge of the tapestry to the opposite strip of Velcro on a wooden baton on the wall.

And the re-hanging begins!

Nearly there!

The second tapestry proved to be much easier. For one it wasn’t as a wide as the first, so less textile to manage, also we started off swapping rollers by fully unrolling the tapestry and re-rolling it from flat. Our last job of the day was to reposition the bed again. The whole process took about 5 hours. Thanks to Zenzie for her assistance, it made the task much less stressful then had we attempted it on our own.

The second tapestry almost up.

Emily, Zena, Lucy, Melinda and Sarah

It’s been a while…but we promise we’ve been busy!

So let’s catch up.

Opening weekend already seems like such a long time ago, it was so cold, and the run up to it had its usual amount of craziness. The cold weather had delayed building work and the application of the new lime render on the east wall. Lime render cannot be applied in temperatures below 5c otherwise it will not set properly. This in turn delayed the removal of internal dust protection in most of the first half of the house.

With the timetable of work somewhat out of everybody’s control due to the Siberian winter the UK was experiencing, finishing the winter clean and reinstating the show rooms affected by the building work proved to be a bit of challenging time.  The Conservation Team as always pulled out all the stops to get everything ready on time.

Other jobs we had to do before we opened was find somewhere to temporarily store the two tapestries from Lady Betty’s Bedroom, that had been taken down for the building work.  The tapestries are rolled on 4.5metre long tubes, so there aren’t many areas that presented themselves as suitable places to put them.  We settled with under the refectory table into he Great Hall.

Lady Betty’s Bedroom tapestries temporarily stored under the Great Hall table.

The beautiful Imari dish that has lived at the top of the Lead Stairs for many years has now been moved to the China Closet as part of the re-display of the space back to a historic inventory.

The Imari dish now on display in Lady Betty’s China Closet.

One of the nicest jobs to do to prepare for opening is starting up the clocks again.  Once the clocks and ticking and chiming again it feels like the house is brought back to life ready for the new season.  Thankfully they all behaved themselves and we didn’t have any problems in restarting them.

A key to wind each clock, the biggest key is for the smallest clock!

Each clock has its own record of when it is wound.

Museum of London Archaeology’s Geomatics team have been at Knole for several weeks now.  They are undertaking a measured survey of the showrooms and new spaces we’ll be opening to visitors to provide, for the first time, accurate floor plans of the rooms.  They will also be photographing the spaces and combining this information with survey information to provide elevation and ceiling plans so that we will have a three-dimensional picture.

Neville and Catherine from MOLA surveying at the top of the Lead Stairs.

This information will be used by architects, Rodney Melville Partnership, as part of the design process for the Inspired by Knole project and will also help us to identify key locations within the building (under the floorboards and behind the panelling) which we want to investigate further as part of the archaeological programme – to help us to better understand the origins and developments of the different parts of the building complex.

Some of MOLAs kit, Total Station (basically an electronic theodolite).

We have some brilliant new interpretation in the Venetian Ambassadors Bedroom, and most exciting of all, the conserved headboard of the James II Bed on display!  The room has four boxes of parts of the bed that have returned from the Textile Studio.  We won’t be reconstructing the bed until after the Inspired by Knole project, the less the parts of the bed are handled the less likely it is that any physical damage will occur to this historically important state bed.

How the Venetian Ambassadors Bedroom looks this season, complete with the conserved headboard on display.

And finally…introducing our new seasonal Conservation and Engagement Assistant Zena.

Now we are settling in to the open season cleaning routine, which is differeent for us this year as the house is open 6 days a week, meaning less cleaning time.  Therefore we have ad to re-jig our cleaning programmes and think about how best to use the time we do have and what the priority areas in the house are.  We also have an extra room to care for,  the newly opened Estate Office, which is home to Knole’s oral history project.

The new and interactive Estate Office

Lucy, Emily, Melinda, Sarah and Zena

Sealing history!

Most of the repair work to the east front is nearly complete. Re-rendering is taking place on the southern end of the façade (the exterior walls to Lady Betty’s rooms). As the old cement render and lathes were removed it revealed not only the extent of the repair required to the timber frame but also lots of voids in the structure and a few interesting finds. Including pencil inscriptions from earlier workman in the 1880s and a match box with workers signatures in.

Some of the voids uncovered could only be accessed again if the exterior of the wall was to be removed again. It was in one of these voids, between Lady Betty’s Sitting Room and Bedroom, at the height of the window pediments, that we have left our mark behind, in the form of the a time capsule.

The void!

Inside the stainless steel (that will not rust even in salt water) capsule we included information, drawings and photos of the building work and repairs; photos of staff and volunteers at Knole and other project staff members.

Knole Team March 2013

As the work began in 2012 and it was such a significant year we also included newspaper cuttings about the Olympics and a Queens Diamond jubilee flag.

With the assistance of one of the contractors we placed the time capsule into the void.

Emily and Nick llift the capsule in to the void

The next day the hole was closed up when new lathes were secured in place before new lime render was then applied. A little piece of Knole history sealed up until the next time the exterior wall requires repair…in 100, 150, 200 years…?

And it’s in!

Emily

Inventory of contents of Knole Time Capsule 5^th March 2013

Photographs of staff and volunteers
List of staff and contractors involved in Phase 1
External photographs of Phase 1.1 and 1.2
Internal photographs of Phase 1.1
Invitations and menus of fundraising events – Dinner 6^th May 2001 and Garden Party 15^th June 2012
Knole Spirit of Place statement
Knole Conservation Team Handbook
Knoledge – guide for children
Inspired by Knole project newsletters June 2011, October 2011, July 2012.
Knole guidebook 2012 edition
Knole park map for visitors
Queen Elizabeth II Diamond Jubilee celebratory tea towel
2012 National Trust members handbook
2012 and 2013 property leaflets
National Trust ‘Detect and protect’ leaflet
Newspapers featuring London 2012 Olympics
Press cuttings about Knole x3
Blue Wool Dosimeter
Phillips screwdriver
USB stick containing oral history interviews and time-lapse videos of the Conservation Team
MOLA building recording summary
10x architect’s drawings of Phase 1.1
2x plans of Phase 1 project
1x hogs hair and 1x pony hair conservation cleaning brushes
Information on show room environmental monitoring equipment
2012 one penny, 20 pence, five pence coin
Union Jack Queen Elizabeth II Diamond Jubilee flag

Eek! Only 15 days till we open

It’s been a while since our latest post about what we’ve been up, but we promise we have definitely been busy.  The last few weeks of the winter clean is always fairly hectic.  This year however added to te usual mayhem has been the deinstallation of internal protection work from the first phase of building work, plus preparations for the next phase.  We have also had various contractors and conservators in and out of the house.

The dust protection tunnel and hoarding has now come down in the Leicester Gallery, Museum Room, Billiard Room, Spangled Dressing Room and Spangled Bedroom.  This meant we could finally deep clean the rooms, and it’s a good job we had the protection because it turns out there was a fair amount of dust!

Volunteer Zena, gives the bay window of the Museum Room a thorough clean after the tunnel was taken down.

Our contractors dismantling the tunnel section in the Billiard Room.

With the tunnel  removed from the Billiard Room, it was time to move the Billiard Table back in to its usual place in the room.

The team re-hang net curtains and blackout curtains in the Billiard Room.

This image demonstrates perfectly the need for internal dust protection during building work.

The tunnel coming down revealed that an area of plaster ceiling in the bay window of the Spangled Dressing Room had become unstable.  With our building surveyor Robin and our contractor we discussed what approach should be taken to make it safe.

Some small bits of plaster had broken off altogether.

After investigation and discussion it was decided to remove the unstable are of plaster. It turned out to be a modern plaster skim…

…and not as much of the plaster needed to be removed as we first thought.

Earlier in the month we took a delivery of some parts of the James II Bed, including the headboard and and some curtains.  They have returned after several years of conservation work.  As they are very carefull packed and in quite large boxes we took the decision to store them in the Venetian Ambassador’s Bedroom.  The Headboard will be no display to visitors during the 2013 season.

Conserved parts of the James II bed have returned from the National Trust textile studio in Norfolk.

It took a whole day for the conservation Team with  two of our volunteers to move all the boxes from the Great Hall to the Venetian Ambassadors Bedroom.  There has been lots of other lifting and moving around of various objects in recent weeks.  Including two tapestries on 4.5 metre long tubes.  They came from Lady Betty’s Bedroom which is now empty for the building work and were stored in the Billiard Room last year.  As the Billiard Room has been re-instated we needed to find another temporary home for them.  It turns out they both fitted rather nicely under the refectory table in the Great Hall.

So where do you store two tapestries on 4.5 metre long tubes…? Under a table of course!

Cliveden Conservation have been back carrying out more work to the Great Hall and Great Stairs floors.

Wet paper towels are left overnight on recently repaired areas of grouting to help it set properly.  If it dries out to quickly the new grouting can fail. 

Toning in the new grouting to match the colours of the stone. 

This week CSC Window Films have been in working int he first half of the house, where windows have been repaired.  They apply a film to the windows that absorbs ultraviolet light out of sunlight coming in the windows.  It is very important to minimise or stop completely any UV coming in to the show rooms as it is the most damaging part of the light spectrum and especially harmful to our textile collection.  Light damage is cumulative and completely irreversible.

Applying new UV film to the windows. The Museum Room window has never had film on before as it has been behind a display cabinets since the 1960s!

More shifting and lifting about!  This time four large portraits needed hanging at the north end of the Leicester Gallery.  They had been taken down while the dust protection was up in front of the window.

The deep clean of rooms has now been finished, leaving two of the long galleries, the Billiard Room, Great Stairs and Spangled Rooms floors to be waxed and polished.  We have already started uncovering some of the rooms and putting the furniture back in to place.  Two more weeks to go and we’ll be open again.  Where did winter go?

Sarah, Lucy, Melinda and Emily

p.s it’s snowing AGAIN!

More mould, more dusting and a crane lift!

Following a much welcomed break over Christmas and New Year the Conservation Team are now back hard at work continuing with the winter clean! Our usual winter routine is very different this season as we are working around the building works taking place as part of the first phase of the Inspired by Knole project.

On the 8th January, a crane returned to Knole to lift off some of the larger scaffold beams from the first phase of works now completed.  As this work takes places directly over the show rooms for safety reasons the house was out of bounds for the day.

The crane swings over the East front of the house.

As we weren’t able to go into the main showrooms, we set to work in the Orangery to give it a deep clean. We soon

discovered that the mild and damp weather conditions had caused mould growth along the windowsills and on some of the benches.

Mould on the windowsills and benches.

The windowsills and benches were cleaned with mild detergent in warm water and lots of elbow grease!

Melinda removes the excess water from the windowsill.

For the rest of the week we have been winter cleaning in the Great Hall. As the ceiling is so high, we built our scaffolding to its highest point which allows us to clean the tops of the picture frames and change light bulbs as well as getting lovely views of the room below.

Here is our time lapse video of a weeks cleaning in the Great Hall

Sarah begins dusting at the top of the Great Hall screen.

We work from the ceiling down, removing cobwebs and dust. As the Great Hall had played host to the Knole staff Christmas party in December, we found rather a lot of party balloons on the top of the panelling along with the usual cobwebs!

Melinda and Sarah dust a painting frame from the scaffolding.

This week, our contractors have begun removing the polythene tunnel which provided dust protection from the building works.  It had been in place along the east front show rooms March 2012. This will allow us to start reinstating the contents of the rooms, much of which has been in store since the tunnel was built, ready for visitors when the house reopens on 9th March.

As part of the preparation for this, all the net curtains (used to keep direct sunlight out of the rooms) from these rooms need washing. These were taken down to allow for the windows to be repaired and were badly water stained from the regular leaks from the windows over the years.  Each curtain has been hand sewn and made to measure so to avoid shrinkage they are individually washed by hand.

The bathroom becomes a temporary laundry!

Thank you to volunteers Zena, Nadja, Susie and Lisa for their hard work this week.

Lucy, Melinda, Sarah and Emily

The words you don’t want to hear over a radio call are…

… “there is a leak in the Ballroom!”
Thankfully it wasn’t quite as bad as it sounds and water wasn’t pouring through the ceiling, but dripping through a crack in the panelling and running down the wall.

Unfortunately the water was running in to the path of one of the paintings and gilt wall lights.

Water running down the panelling in the Ballroom, behind a painting (you can see the bottom of the picture frame at the top of the photo)

So we immediately sprung in to action to remove both objects from the wall.

Painting of the 3rd Duke of Dorset removed from the path of the water.

The gilt wall light that hangs above the portrait of the 3rd Duke.  It is temporarily resting on a sheet of plastazote and acid free tissue till it is safe to be re-hung.

Once the painting was down we thoroughly inspected the back of it to check for any water damage.  The back of the frame in one corner and a very small area on the back of the canvas were slightly damp.  We will allow this to dry out before going back on the wall and monitor it to ensure there is no mould growth or further physical damage.

Very small damp area on the back of the canvas.

Once the movable objects had been taken down from the wall and away from the route of the leak, we set about protecting others that were too big to move, and as the leak was so small unnecessary to move.  We wrapped the large portrait of Elizabeth Colyear, 7th Duchess of Dorset, in tyvek so if there were any further drips they would not come in to contact with the painting or frame.

Absobent pads placed on top of some dusters, on top of the tyvek protecting the picture frame and painting. Although the leak has been isolated this has been left in place just in case more drips find their way down through the crack in the panelling again.

As we were busy moving paintings and hanging Tyvek our Premises Team were hunting down the source of the leak.  Thankfully they found it quite quickly and were able to isolate the problem until it can be permanently repaired.

Just an average Thursday afternoon for the Conservation Team!

Emily, Lucy, Melinda and Sarah

Winter Clean in the Ballroom

Completing the first room of the winter clean is always a good feeling.  It took 8 days and there were a couple of extra challenges this year.  In preparation for the next phase of external building works the window in the Ballroom is to be boarded up to prevent dust ingress from the work to the window and stone work.

In order for this to be built we have had to take down the pelmet and curtains and the big red blind, as well as move some items of furniture up to the other end of the room and take four paintings down off the wall.  This was definitely a job for the scaffold tower, which was already in use in the room for high level ceiling and picture frame cleaning.

A view of the Ballroom ‘put to bed’ for the winter from the scaffold tower.

Until we got up to the top of the scaffold tower we were not exactly sure how the pelmet was secured in place.  We soon discovered it was simply nailed to a bit of wood!  We used the end of a flat head screw driver and pliers to release the nails.  We also discovered that what from the ground looks like a pelmet that is all of one piece, it is actually in four separate sections.  Which was good news as it made it easier to handle and not as heavy as it would have been in one piece.

The pelmet was nailed in to a wooden shelf attached to the wall with brackets.

The first section of the pelmet down and ready for a surface clean.

The pelmet and curtains are scheduled for cleaning every five years.  They were last done (in-situ) in 2009.  So although they were not due a for full clean just yet we took advantage of the fact that they were coming down to remove any surface dust and debris.

Lucy passes the second section of the pelmet down the scaffold tower to Sarah.

Sarah and Lucy laying out a section of pelmet on Tyvek. Each section has been interleaved with Tyvek to keep dust off them while they are down from the window.

Some of the interesting creatures in the frieze around the top of the panelling.

Lucy uses a soft pony hair brush to surface clean a section of the pelmet, by teasing cobwebs, clumps of dust and debris in to the nozzle of the vacuum cleaner.

The bay window after we had finished preparing the area for the dust protection to be installed.

Paintings from the South wall either side the bay window have been taken down and stored at the other end of the Ballroom while the building work takes place.

You can watch our winter clean work in the Ballroom on our timelapse film.

Emily, Sarah, Lucy and Melinda

Counting down and this and that…

By the time September comes around and the school holidays are over we begin to think about the winter clean and the colder months ahead.  Although we’ll be wearing every item in our wardrobes in a bid not to get hyperthermia as we work, the winter clean is probably all the team’s favourite time of year.  Less monotonous (but important) vacuuming up and down of show room floors but instead every day is spent up close and personal with the collection as we clean and condition check every item before putting them to bed in their dust covers or acid free tissue paper.  We’ve still got one more open week to go, and as well as all the regular open season cleaning here are a few other things that have gone on in recent weeks:

Ian Tyers, dendrochronolist, returned for further investigation of some of the panel paintings from the Brown Gallery. Check out an earlier blog to find out more http://knolenationaltrust.wordpress.com/2012/07/14/dendrochronology-isnt-easy-to-say/

Another leak in Lady Betty’s Bedroom, just as we were preparing to remove the carpet, we had to stop to get the buckets out! The building work hasn’t got to this end of the East front yet. We can’t wait till it does!

Barbara Villiers (by Sir Peter Lely) returned from the Hampton Court Place ‘The Wild, the Beautiful and the Damned’ exhibition at the beginning of October.

The painting has been on display in the Great Hall since it returned from exhibition. This has been for two reasons. 1: to reacclimatise the painting back to the environmental conditions back at Knole. 2: The Spangled Dressing Room where she would normally hang is being used as a temporary store room during the first phase of the external building repairs. It is full of furniture and paintings from other show rooms in the first half and there is not enough space to squeeze Barbara in too!

Furniture in the Museum Room has been covered in Tyvek to protect it from dust and debris before the removal of the render on the exterior wall.

Dust and debris that has found its way in to the Billiard Room, so a good job the Campaign Chair has its dust cover on!

Packing up the contents of Lady Betty’s rooms was hard work, but we had fun too! Lisa (volunteer Conservation Assistant) thinks about an image change!

Lucy, Emily and Helen enjoyed the Attingham Trust’s 60th Anniversary Conference. It was very interesting to hear from a range of speakers as enthused about our country houses as us 3 geeks!

Sarah cleans the pelmet from Lady Betty’s Sitting Room.

Our wonderfully tidy emergency salvage store. We’ve recently relocated and restocked the store room as part of the revision of emergency planning. We had a lot of items delivered and it got in to a bit of a mess while we didn’t have the time to sort through all the equipment. Lucy and Zena (volunteer Conservation Assistant) spent a chilly afternoon sorting it all out.

This year’s winter clean will be filmed on our time lapse camera, so you can follow our work every step of the way!

Emily, Melinda, Sarah and Lucy

A Time Capsule for Knole

The building repair work at Knole has already revealed some fascinating information about people who have worked and lived in the building in the past – including graffiti on the panelling, hidden behind the Victorian render of 1891.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

As part of the programme of work continues the roof spaces are being cleaned out with a vacuüm cleaner to remove years of accumulated dust, plaster rubble, fragments of timber, as well as wasps and birds nests!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

As we clean each roof space we are collecting samples of what has been removed.  During this process we made another exciting discovery in one of the central roof spaces, a matchbox!

 

 

 

 

The bottom of the matchbox was cut out and stuck back in, with two names written on the cut out piece and a date (1949) added to one of the side panels.  The matchbox was certainly left deliberately, and it’s discovery has the Knole team thinking about how we should commemorate the National Trust’s work of the 21^st century.

We need your help!  How should we ‘leave our mark’ on the building?  If we were to create our own ‘matchbox time capsule’ what could we put in it?  For example, if we were to leave a digital record on a USB data stick will the same technology be around in 100 years time for the information to be accessed?  Please send us your suggestions to Inspiredbyknole@nationaltrust.org.uk or comment on this blog.

A Sonnet for Knole

One of our volunteers, Kristin Gill,  has written a wonderful sonnet describing the problems the building and collection at Knole face.  She has beautifully summed up the threats the Inspired by Knole conservation project will begin to solve over the coming years.

A Sonnet for Knole

Inspired by Emily

The ragstone treasure house is under siege,
Unseen, unheard, her enemies worm in.
The dot-sized beetle’s offspring will not leave
Until they’ve chewed through chairs carved for a king.
The wily sun once streamed through Tudor pane,
King Henry’s feather tribute to his son:
Royal blues, proud reds, bright greens began to wane,
On hangings, cushions, beds, light’s work was done.

The leopards on the battlements stand firm,
They scan the rolling park for signs of harm;
But leaking roofs, cracked render they now learn,
Are greater cause for action and alarm.

Serene the Grand Old Lady bides her time,
Till she shall have the strength once more to shine.    

Kristin Gill

Thank you Kristin for allowing us to share this with everyone.

Emily