WE DID IT

WE DID IT!

Fired up

Project conservator Leesa Vere-Stevens explains how conservation helped uncover the secrets of Belsay Hall’s fireplaces.

Volunteers and staff have been crucial in understanding and conserving fireplaces and a kitchen range at Belsay Hall, Northumberland.

Belsay Hall was designed by Sir Charles Monck between 1807 and 1817 and has around fifty rooms, most of which still have fireplaces. There are also cooking ranges in the kitchen areas.

Volunteers Jill Huxtable and Bronia Banecki worked on a fireplace in a second-floor servants’ room alongside visitor assistant Michelle Beattie. They worked on this fireplace and five others over four days to return them to a sustainable level of conservation.

Bees and butterflies The team, which also included visitor assistant Simon Donaldson and volunteer heritage consultant Richard Mason, discovered that two of the fireplaces were designed by Thomas Jeckyll (1827–1881), a pioneer designer in the British Aesthetic Movement. Our fireplace surrounds bear a small roundel embossed with two butterflies, and this was how Jeckyll signed his designs for the Norwich foundry Barnard and Bishop. Jeckyll worked with Charles Barnard, of Barnard and Bishop, from 1850 but when Barnard’s two sons joined the company in 1859 the firm used a four-bee motif – as seen in another roundel on our fireplaces. The firm then became Barnard Bishop and Barnards.

Battling rust These These fireplaces fireplaces needed extensive treatment. The needed team rubbed them extensive down with wire wool to remove treatment rust, vacuumed and then treated the cast iron with black stove polish, which may have been used to maintain them when in regular use.

The volunteers are continuing to work on other fireplaces throughout the hall and our work is enriching our knowledge of how it was originally fitted out. The two Jeckyll fireplaces

PLAN YOUR VISIT Come and see the results yourself. For more information visit www.english-heritage.org.uk/belsay conserved so far were in servants’ quarters and we realised that there are identical models within two principal bedrooms, all dating from after 1859 as they exhibit the four-bee motif.

Moving the kitchen The team have used their expertise in fireplace refurbishment to help restore a kitchen range and have provided information in the hope of solving one of the hall’s kitchen mysteries, concerning the range in Sir Arthur Middleton’s new kitchen. Sir Arthur inherited Belsay Hall in 1867 and reconfigured the kitchen in 1912 to move food preparation from the old kitchen to the new – closer to his new dining room so his food was served hotter. The range was fairly dilapidated but, thanks to the refurbishment, details have emerged revealing it was a freestanding kitchen range manufactured by the Carron factory in Falkirk between 1906 and 1946. It could even have been installed by troops billeted to the hall in the Second World War, replacing Sir Arthur’s earlier installation.

The team’s work on the fireplaces and range is a classic example of how information is gleaned bit by bit, but can often be crucial in building a picture of the development of a site over time. ■

Clockwise from top Volunteer Bronia Banecki treating a Thomas Jeckyll fireplace; bee roundal showing the four-bee motif of Barnard Bishop and Barnards foundry; Belsay Hall; the kitchen range after treatment; visitor assistant Michelle Beattie at work treating the kitchen range; Thomas Jeckyll with his father

Our work is enriching our knowledge of how it was originally fitted out