We were asked if we would host this event at the end of April, a regular now in the Herefordshire calendar and we were delighted to do so. My grandmother had been involved with the Red Cross most of her adult life, starting when her family home at Marsh Court, Stockbridge, was turned in to a nursing home during the First World War, so there was a strong family connection.

The event was spread around the grounds, but visitors also had free access to the castle once they had paid for their entry ticket. The stalls mostly sold plants and gardening-related produce. About 2,500 attended, in coolish weather after a hot spell, but it was dry and bright. There were certainly more women than men, although those men that did come were given plenty of plants to carry back to their cars so they had a useful role.

After a successful day, the Red Cross had raised about £32,000 and the organisers, who had worked very hard to ensure all went well, were very pleased. It was good for us to be associated with such a successful event and to have the chance to welcome so many local people for a good cause. We hope they will come again. We host four or five charity events a year, and this has been one of the best.

JH-B
28th May 2010

When we asked Donald Smith, the restorer we use for painted ceilings, to touch up the Library ceiling this year, he reported a sagging area. On closer inspection, one of the ribs which form the frame of the 44 painted panels, executed when the Library was redecorated by George Fox in the 1860s, had cracked and dropped. Something serious was obviously happening.

We first had a Health & Safety moment and checked to see if the damaged section was about to drop. It appeared secure, so we did not have to support it from below, which would have been quite tricky given the height of the room. We then cleared the furniture from the Queen’s Bedroom above the crack and lifted the floorboards. But before we could see what the problem was, we had to hack away the lathe and plaster layer of sound proofing, which insulates the sound of footsteps, in the days before fitted carpets, in the bedroom from the company in the room below.

Then, we found the cause of the problem straight away. The ceiling was suspended from beams by nails driven in from below. The nails were hand cut (nothing but the best for my forebears) and tapered. A combination of the weight of the plaster and drying out of the wood had caused a few nails to start to pull out of the wood. Their shape did not help.

We could not lift the ceiling back, so after consultation with architect, engineer and our Clerk of Works, Alan Smith, we decided to secure it all with angled brackets. We used Graham Walker and his team from Ledbury to do the work. One of them was thin enough to fit under the floor in the gap above the ceiling to reach the areas inaccessible from above. We hope it will now be secure for the indefinite future but have taken the chance also to photograph all 44 painted panels just in case.

JH-B 11th May 2010

We are not in the coldest area of the UK, but it is quite cold enough here at the moment. A blanket of snow covers the roofs except where our insulation is not up to standard, and the lake is frozen over. Otherwise, it is business as usual.

My grandfather installed most of the central heating in 1932, but it was only put on for special occasions when I was a child. Instead, we had wood fires, wood burning stoves, imported from Denmark, and an AGA in the kitchen. There were old ceramic hot water bottles and a strange caged light bulb to warm the beds, each hazardous in its own right if not removed in time by unsuspecting visitors. We dressed in warmer clothes then, shut doors and excluded draughts with black tape etc wherever possible. In due course, my parents installed a straw-burning boiler, which had a voracious appetite for bales, but did a good job and saved large oil bills..

In the big freeze of 1963, my father drove a Land Rover, rather tentatively, on the frozen lake. As the snow thawed, we all went onto the roofs to shovel the snow out of the valley gutters so the melted snow could run uninterrupted to the drains. The wrong sort of snow, familiar to recent users of Eurostar services, also blew through the gaps in the slates to lie on the ceilings below. It had to be shovelled out before it melted and came down into the rooms below.

Now, we have extended the central heating and installed new and more efficient boilers. Most of the roofs are insulated and the wood fires still help, although their effect is more cosmetic.
But when the thaw comes, we will still have to shovel the snow from the valley gutters, but in the meantime our guests feel snug and warm.            JH-B    8th January 2010