March 11, 2010

Today I met up with the head conservation officer for East of England National Trust region (ok so I might have made that job title up- you get the idea tho) to talk about the state of the dining room pillars in the Abbey. I did some sample photos so we could have a look at what level of detail is required for them to have a good record of the pillars themselves. I'm going to get full use out of all 21 MP of my camera for this project!








Oops- before I go any farther let me tell you what the National Trust is. I may have done this before, but I don't think I did. Since I spend so much time on a Trust property, you must be wondering about the organization that I'm volunteering for. The National Trust is a massive charity that owns quite a lot of the enormous manor houses here in England. During The War (which is what British people call WWII as it's still very fresh in the memory of people here) taxes were raised, and many of the wealthiest families were paying 80% or 90% tax. Which is a bit much I think. Quite a few couldn't afford it, so they gave their houses to the government in payment of the tax. Which didn't really help the government. Anyway the National Trust got the idea that these houses are part of our history and should be preserved. Often the government simply gave them the properties because they couldn't afford the upkeep. But after the war many older members of these families were concerned that the houses would be run down or trashed by younger generations, or they wanted to preserve a record of their way of life, so they donated them to the NT. Anglesey Abbey was donated by a very wealthy old bachelor, Lord Fairhaven, upon his death in 1966. Now the Trust owns tons of coastline, open land, and other sorts of things which are being preserved by them for everyone. Their motto is Forever, for Everyone.

Now, back to Anglesey Abbey and the problem we're having with our 2 disintegrating dining room pillars. :) Because there's still a big hole in the floor around the South pillar (they dug up the flooring to see if the problem was being caused by damp), the public is wondering what's going on, and the ever vigilant house volunteers are up to the task of questions from the public. But today we found something very interesting thanks to one of the older house stewards. As I was showing the conservation guy the photos on my laptop and zooming in really close, I realized a small crowd had gathered around to look on. One of the stewards said "did you know there are some older photographs than the ones from the 1920s? I saw them one time on display." And we were all like "What?!" We managed to locate these said photos, which were even better, they were photos of drawings done in the 1810s. We took said drawings into the dining room and stood there determining which part of the room they were of, and we discovered something very interesting indeed. Namely, that the pillars which are in the room now don't look the same as the ones that are in the drawing. Everyone assumed that the pillars were the same age as the room, that they were there when the monks were some 900 years ago. But actually, in the drawings we could see that the pillars were much bigger, and made from cut stones (like bricks but bigger). What we have now is some sort of stone (I forget what).

I've had the opportunity to get really close to the pillars and to see them on a granular level- I can almost count the grains of "sand" that are falling off the things. So as an engineer I found a few things interesting- if these are solid pillars made of one type of stone, why does the inner part of the pillar look like cement with big chunks of rocks in it? The outside of the pillars is not the same consistency as the inside, which you can easily tell from the photo, and the inside and outside are decaying differently. Also, why has one pillar decayed more rapidly than the other one? They've decided to send off the sandy bits to be analysed- I'm curious to know what they'll discover.

Fortunately we all agreed that photographing the pillars when the house is open would be interesting to the public, but would drive me absolutely mad as I'd have to answer every question about what I'm doing. :) I barely get within 5 feet of the pillars as it is without being questioned about them- either by room stewards or the public. :) I enjoy working with the public, which is why I was appointed as a community warden in the first place. But being questioned makes photography difficult, especially if you happen to be lying on the floor or looking ridiculous. :) I was banging on about the pillars to a group today, when a random member of the public today suggested we should contact R Abbey- apparently she went to school there, it was bought by English Heritage blah blah blah...when I asked her why we should contact them, she told me they had painted their medieval undercroft mustard color. I thought... Uh, thanks for that- what on earth does that have to do with my pillars turning to sand?! I don't think I could deal with that all day for 2 weeks straight. :)

Will keep you all posted as the pillar photos progress- if you find me hard to reach Mondays and Tuesdays it'll be because I'm in the undercroft photographing pillars. :) And as everyone seems to have a suggestion or theory about the cause of the disintegration, post yours here and let's see how we get on. :)