Lynne About Loughborough: Charnwood Arts

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Sunday, 2 August 2026

Half a Century of Creativity: Charnwood Arts Turns 50

As this blog celebrates its 13th birthday in August, I'm hosting a few guest blogposts during the month...

Today's guest post has been contributed by the CEO of Charnwood Arts, Shirley Novak, and is a celebration of CA's 50 years! What an amazing thing it is that the organisation has been an integral part of Loughborough's creative scene for such a long time! During those 50 years, CA have been based in several different places, including an Edwardian building on Granby Street, and in Fearon Hall, but today they can be found on Steeple Row, where they have been in offices previously occupied by a firm of solicitors, since about 2022, not long after Shirley arrived. CA has a broad reach, and an ethos of inclusivity - even if, like me, you think you're hopeless at art and not a creative at all - and there are big, bold plans for its 50th year, and beyond. But, I'll let Shirley tell you about this ...

Half a Century of Creativity: Charnwood Arts Turns 50

Shirley Novak, CEO Charnwood Arts

June/July 2026

Charnwood Arts is based in the former Straw & Pearce offices

It was exactly fifty years ago that Charnwood Arts first opened its doors, and was born from a powerful vision, boundless passion, and a firm belief that creativity has the unique power to bring people together.

We all know that for so many of those years, Kevin Ryan was at the helm, guiding and shaping every step of the journey.

Kev Ryan at Picnic in the Park, 2016

Picnic in the Park 2017, organised by Charnwood Arts

Over these five decades, Charnwood Arts has become far more than just a place to make art; it has been the heartbeat of our community, a space where ideas grow, stories are told, and every single voice is welcomed and heard.

This month marks six years since I took the position of CEO during the COVID pandemic. Looking back, it was an immensely challenging time for everyone, not only within Charnwood Arts but across society as a whole. It was a turning point after which nothing would ever return to how it was before.

We needed to rethink everything. The Arts Council (who are our main funders) worked closely with us to ‘make ready’ the organisation for another successful application for the National Portfolio funding to keep Charnwood Arts doing and what it does best for another 4 years, despite the uncertainties through COVID. Those 4 years have turned into 6, and here we still are and will be for some time to come yet!

Back in the mid-1970s, a small group of passionate local people saw a gap: there was plenty of talent in Charnwood, but few opportunities for residents to access, enjoy, or take part in the arts. With determination and a shared vision, they founded what would become Charnwood Arts, an independent charity dedicated to making creativity accessible to all ages, backgrounds, and abilities. What started with simple workshops, exhibitions, and community events soon took root.

Word spread: here was an organisation that listened, adapted, and put people first. Whether you were a child picking up a pencil for the first time, an older adult looking for connection, or an emerging artist needing a platform, Charnwood Arts opened its doors, which pretty much remains our focus today. One of the most wonderful things about Charnwood Arts is how it evolves. It has moved to embrace film, creative crafts, music, digital art, and installations, and the emerging artist programme means we celebrate local talent employing local artists to deliver a wide variety of sessions, creating opportunities with support to many new artists. Charnwood Arts, always keeps pace with the times while staying true to its original mission.

When you look back at 50 years, you realise Charnwood Arts has never been only about making art. It’s about building community. It’s the friendships formed in a weekly session, the pride of seeing your work displayed in our little exhibition space, hearing yourself reading your own written podcast, making music from sounds found in the forest to help with anxiety, and attending the successful Breathe Create sessions set up to specifically to use creativity to improve wellbeing. Breathe Create is not a new concept, but a simple approach, such as take a deep breathe, take some time for yourself and be creative has literally saved lives, given space and feedback tells us that it makes a huge difference to how people use creativity in their own time away from Charnwood Arts as well. Basically, in moments of change, economic shifts, social challenges, or even times of separation, Charnwood Arts has remained a constant: a safe, welcoming space where creativity helps people connect, heal, and feel part of something bigger.

Pottery workshops at Charnwood Arts

Our recent Bells Bridges and Belonging heritage installation has been a highlight of the year so far and helps us kick off the start of the planned 50th celebrations across a 12-month period.

Bells, Bridges & Belonging is a creative heritage project led by Charnwood Arts in partnership with One to One Development Trust and hosted at Taylors Bell Foundry Museum, celebrating Loughborough and Charnwood’s unique history, culture, and community identity.

Bells, Bridges and Belonging installation is a visually stunning interactive experience featuring a transformational 3D bell as its centrepiece. The installation incorporates film, photography, audio interviews, graphics and soundtrack and One to One has curated existing materials from Charnwood Arts previous Bell Festivals, as well as drawing on the extensive archive of Loughborough Bell foundry Museum Trust. The installation will live at the Foundry museum, but plans to tour the piece with large projections and used as school presentations are being planned as I write. https://onetoonedevelopment.org/portfolio/bells-bridges-and-belonging/

It centres on three powerful symbols:

*Bells: Honours Loughborough’s world-famous bell-founding heritage, how bells mark time, events, memory, and community life.

*Bridges: Represents connection between people, places, past & present, different cultures and generations.

*Belonging: Explores what it means to be part of this area, sharing stories, voices, and experiences of all communities here.

Banner from the Bell Festival 2024

Preparing for 'Bells, Bridges & Belonging' down at the bellfoundry

Other 50th celebrations include a brand-new edition of ‘Coffee House’.

The ’Coffee House’ was, originally, a literary journal, produced by Charnwood Arts featuring poetry, prose, and visual art. It was edited by Charnwood-based poet and fiction writer, Deborah Tyler-Bennett, and included creative writing and artwork by contributors from Charnwood’s writing communities, and beyond, including poets from Europe, Ireland, France, and America.

The journal appeared in print twice a year and was renowned for its high-quality artistic content. It remained well reviewed and featured in the Poetry Society’s ‘Poetry Map of Britain’. Part of the magazine’s legacy was past issues being digitally stored by the South Bank Poetry Library.

As part of the 50th Birthday Celebrations Charnwood Arts is creating a special edition of the ‘Coffee House’, which will include poems, short stories, flash fiction, and artworks. There will also be Coffee House Podcasts for this special anniversary year.

We are also planning a community weave for the railings outside our building, a 50 pieces of artwork exhibition a short film and much, much more so keep your eyes peeled.

In closing, let’s just absorb that figure again, fifty years! Over those years, Charnwood Arts has touched so many lives, inspired generations, and become a thread in our community’s cultural fabric. We continue to evolve, holding fast to the idea that art belongs to everyone. You get to decide what art looks like to you. Personally, I don’t care about skill level, background, or anything else that might feel like a barrier because our mission is simple: to ‘make things possible’ where others might see only limits.”

Here’s to 50 years of imagination, inspiration, and community and to many more years of creativity ahead!

Join the Celebration

Throughout 2026, Charnwood Arts will be hosting special events, exhibitions, and celebrations across the borough. It’s a chance to revisit favourite memories, meet the people behind the work, and see what the next chapter holds. Whether you have been involved since the very beginning, joined along the way, or are discovering Charnwood Arts for the first time this is your celebration too.

Happy 50th Anniversary, Charnwood Arts!

Shirley Novak CEO Charnwood Arts

www.charnwoodarts.com

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About Shirley Novak

In the mid 80's to mid 90's Shirley was a professional singer-songwriter touring nationally and throughout Europe. She wrote and recorded four albums of original material in her own brand of acoustic-based music. Following her father’s death in 1993, Shirley lost her soul and decided to stop touring and change her purpose.

Shirley then spent many years sharing her passion for learning to communicate through music, using music technology delivering music/media centred workshops providing opportunities to enable anyone with an interest, or a range of skills to access music/media at all levels.

Shirley worked with people with disabilities, children on the autistic spectrum, people in rehabilitation through injury, disadvantaged groups people struggling with their mental health, and children with SEN.

In 2012, she began working part-time at Newark MIND, a support service for people with mental health struggles as CEO alongside her interactive music work. After 7 great years, Shirley went back to music full-time for a year, but when the CEO role at Charnwood Arts appeared in 2020, it seemed a fantastic opportunity to combine skills along with the passion of enabling people to do something they never dreamed they could, alongside creativity for wellbeing.

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Notes

Charnwood Arts is based on Steeple Row, opposite the Old Rectory, and Chesterton House. Address: 27 Rectory Place, Loughborough, LE11 1UW. The front door can be found at whatthreewords: commented.clock.models

You can follow events hosted by Charnwood Arts, and get involved in some of their activities. Checkout their Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/people/Charnwood-Arts/100070695557908/

More about the Poetry Society project

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Posted by lynneaboutloughborough

With apologies for typos which are all mine!

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Dyer, Lynne (2026). Half a Century of Creativity: Charnwood Arts Turns 50. Available from: https://lynneaboutloughborough.blogspot.com/2026/07/half-century-of-creativity-charnwood.html [ URL e.g. https://lynneaboutloughborough.blogspot.com/2023/03/loughborough-and-isaac-newton.html] [Accessed 2 August 2026]

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Monday, 24 November 2025

A View From The Studio

Another couple of weeks of frantic activity, and so many things to blog about that it’s making it difficult to choose!

I shan’t blog about our wonderful fair, despite this year it being spread further around town, so this year taking in Derby Square. I did visit, and it was as spectacular and atmospheric as usual!

A week later I found myself out at nighttime again, this time visiting the venues that were open for ‘Loughborough Lates’. Who knew there were so many artists, art events, and art studios in town?!

Sure, I knew of Fearon Hall, where there loads of people drawing and painting self-portraits, and still life pictures, and I’ve taken some classes myself at Charnwood Arts, where during ‘Loughborough Lates’ there was a display of some fantastic artwork. I’ve also previously visited Modern Painters New Decorators in their new home on Aumbry, sorry, I mean Aumberry Gap, so it was fantastic to see so many people enjoying the artwork in this venue. Last year I also went along to what I still call the Albert Street Artists on Southfield Road, better known now as The Tangent Gallery, and I was thrilled to see some lovely paintings this year, too.

The venue that was completely new to me was the one in Stone Yard! I mean, Stone Yard is one street/road/path that I usually walk past without even noticing, either when walking along Church Gate, or along Biggin Street, so to learn that there was an art studio along there was fascinating. It was actually upstairs, sort of over the carpet shop, I guess, and it was huge!!! While I was there to see the artwork, I admit I was a little bit distracted by being able to see the upper floors of the buildings around the area.

Here's hoping for more successful ‘Loughborough Lates’ in the future, and more new venues joining in!

The other place I visited last week was the Mountsorrel Museum and Heritage Trust which is based upstairs in the public library building on The Green. I’ve been before, but this visit was specifically to see the temporary exhibition about local tiles, researched and presented by the Charnwood Forest Geopark. This was a lovely little exhibition, and I was pleased to see that our local brickmakers, Tuckers, were mentioned! Do pop along if you! The museum is, I think, only open Thursday and Friday afternoons and Saturday 9.30-12, but do check for yourself as I might have got this wrong!

Here's hoping I find lots more Loughborough connections on my travels!!

Following a trip to Nottingham on the train, walking up Nottingham Road, I was saddened to note that the ghost sign for Putts, on the side wall, has now been obliterated.

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Posted by lynneaboutloughborough

With apologies for typos which are all mine!

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Thank you for reading this blog.

Copyright:

Dyer, Lynne (2025). A View From the Studio. Available from: https://lynneaboutloughborough.blogspot.com/2025/11/a-view-from-studio.html [Accessed 24 November 2025]

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site: https://lynneaboutloughborough.blogspot.com/ “Radmoor House”

NOTE – the words you’re actually looking for must be in “” and the first of these must be preceded by a space

Thank you for reading this blog.

Lynne

Friday, 21 October 2022

Jarrow Marchers and Loughborough cinemas

On this day in 1936, the Jarrow Marchers arrived in Loughborough, apparently travelling 11.25 miles [1] from Nottingham, on their way to London via Leicester, to present their petition to parliament. Their arrival in Loughborough came during a year when:

“1936: Edward VIII becomes King but abdicates the same year.

George VI then becomes King.

The Empire Cinema closes. The New Empire Cinema opens on Cattle Market.

The Odeon cinema opens on Baxter Gate.”

- - PMP2000: People Making Places. Charnwood Arts, 1999

In celebration of the start of the new millennium, the year 2000, Charnwood Arts, a local arts organisation, researched some of the history of Loughborough and presented a succinct timeline on the internet, although this is no longer available. The national context into which Loughborough is placed, is the scandal associated with the relationship between Edward VIII and Wallis Simpson, which culminated in his abdication as King, and the rise of unemployment across the country, while the local context naturally centres around the cinemas in Loughborough.

The equally succinct timeline of events in 1936, which appears on the archived BBC History webpages, includes a note of the death of George V, in January 1936, and the subsequent abdication of Edward VIII in December of the same year. The site also notes the end of the Anglo-Egyptian Treaty in August 1936, and the presentation to parliament of a petition in person by 200 workers from Jarrow, an event which has some significance to the town of Loughborough, and to its cinemas.

1936 was the midst of the golden era of film and Loughborough, like many other towns, had, over the years, had several venues which adapted to the showing of films. These included, amongst others, the Picture House on Ashby Road, the Temperance Hall on the corner of Cattle Market and Granby Street, the Oddfellows Hall on Sparrow Hill, and the New Empire, of 1914. However, the early ownership and management of the local cinemas is a separate story in itself, involving the Universal Car Company, Percy Oswin and Charles Knight Deeming.

In addition to the various venues showing films, in 1936 the town also had a purpose-built cinema, which was opened on Monday 19 September 1921, by councillor Armstrong, the town’s deputy mayor. The Victory Cinema, whose first manager was Horace Higgins, was situated on Biggin Street, its tall tower, rising from the corner of a side street making a big impact at the time. The cinema was designed by A.E. Bullock of Messrs. A.E. Bullock and Jeeves, architects of London, and was built along Neo-Classical lines. The cost was over £3,000 and inside, the building was decorated in a variety of shades of green, a deep azure blue and gold, with 429 de lux inlaid chairs provided by Turner Cheshire Furnishings, and carpets by local company, Armstrong & Sons of Market Place.

Tip-up seating similar to that in the Victory cinema

In 1933, The Victory became part of the circuit owned by local man Charles K. Deeming, when Griffin and Spalding of Nottingham provided new carpets, seating and curtains. A new balcony, designed by Archibald Hurley Robinson with seating for 500 people, was installed in 1937, increasing the capacity to 1,400. In 1953, the cinema then passed into the hands of the Essoldo chain. Many-a local has a tale to tell about the double seats which were a feature of the back row, and the low-cost tickets, although many also remember The Victory as ‘the flea pit’, a commonly used description across the country for a somewhat run-down cinema. The Victory eventually closed in January 1967, demolished by August of that same year.

Whilst the Victory had been a purpose-built cinema, the New Empire was built as a multi-purpose establishment, that developed into a dedicated cinema. Initially named the New Empire, presumably to distinguish it from the Empire Varieties venue on Swan Street, the New Empire was situated on what is now known as Cattle Market, and was opened on Monday 14 September 1914 by the mayor, Thomas Mayo. As well as a ground floor, the building had a balcony, and seating capacity for 1,000 people on tip-up chairs, provided by local company, Armstrong & Sons. The interior was decorated in white and gold, and the walls were adorned with gold-framed pictorial panels. The programmes presented comprised musical acts, drama performances and vaudeville, alongside films and a children’s matinee programme each Saturday afternoon. Originally owned by H.P. Higgins, in 1916 Higgins and H.N. Martin formed a limited company – the Loughborough Theatre Company – and by 1917, adverts for events taking place in the venue simply appeared as “The Empire”.

The New Empire when it was the Curzon, 2004

In 1929 there was some remodelling of the Empire, particularly of the café area, designed by the local architect Francis C. Haynes, which resulted in two gable ends fronting onto Cattle Market, the café being in the left-hand side, the cinema entrance to the right. A more major redevelopment, however, too place in 1936, which included a new auditorium by Archibald Hurley Robinson, who we already know was responsible for the design of the refurbished Victory Cinema in 1937. In addition to the new auditorium, the frontage that we would now call Art Deco was completely altered, faced with Hathernware (formerly Hathern Station Brick and Terra Cotta Company) cream faience tiles, the parapets dressed in glazed blue copings atop a decorative frieze. Rising from the centre of the building was a striking tower. The building was officially opened by the mayor, Frederick George Fleeman. The Hathernware company would go on to clad many more cinema buildings, and their work can be found across the globe.

Hathernware faience tiles on the Odeon cinema, 2021

The New Empire as the Odeon, 2021

Meanwhile, over the other side of town, another entertainment venue was being built. The Odeon, part of the new Oscar Deutsch chain of cinemas was officially opened on Saturday November 21, 1936, by Loughborough mayor Arthur Lacey. The cinema, designed by Arthur J. Price of the Harry Weedon Architecture practice, was prominently sited in an area near the Nottingham Road, its striking façade being constructed in cream faience tiles from Hathernware, in a basketweave pattern with bands of black and green tiles at the bottom. Its side facing onto Lemyngton Street had an advertising board of unusual design as it was secured in a brick frame, with horizontal bands of protruding brick. The corners of the building were gracefully curved in shape, while the entrance canopy and the steps into the building echoed this design.

The former Odeon cinema as Beacon Bingo, 2021

The advertising boards on the side of the former Odeon, 2021

This new Odeon cinema was managed by Clarence George Starkey, who had come directly from his position as manager of the Rialto Cinema in Leeds. Despite only being at Leeds for a year, Starkey had plenty of cinema managerial experience, having held a similar position at the Regal Cinema in Bradford for three years, and having spent 10 years prior to that in Chicago, where he owned a dance hall, conducted dance orchestras and arranged numerous shows and entertainments.

Detail of the basketweave Hathernware faience tiles on the former Odeon, 2021

As a result of Starkey’s experience, the people of Loughborough were treated to performances of Starkey’s accordion-playing, organised parades through the town’s streets, and to a host of amusing promotional displays, both within the cinema foyer, and across the town in shops with whom Starkey struck up a deal. One of the most exciting promotional events involved jumping beans in the local electricity showrooms, designed to promote the film “The Charge of the Light Brigade”, which jumped for joy at the information imparted on a card in the showroom window which read: “The charge of the Loughborough light brigade has been reduced, all electricity labour savers are now within range of your pocket!” Hopefully, this playful marketing brought in a bigger audience than might otherwise have been the case, and this was certainly so, when to promote “Marked Woman” Starkey placed photographs of female factory workers on boards in the cinema foyer, marked some faces with a cross and invited those who recognised themselves to collect a free pass to see the film.

The photographs of the factory workers had been taken by Starkey himself who actually visited all the factories in Loughborough in 1938. This would have been an enormous feat, Loughborough being at the height of its industrial strength at the time. Indeed, in 1938, at the ball staged to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the incorporation of the borough of Loughborough, the mayor, Arthur Lacey said: “... the inhabitants of the town were the citizens of no mean city and, after all was said and done, took a rightful second place in the county [after the county town of Leicester]. A London man had once told him that one could not go into any town or city in the country which did not contain a product of Loughborough." In January 1931, the Nottingham Journal carried the headline “Big contracts for buses, bells, bricks, generators, cranes.” and went on to also cover hosiery and perfume manufacture.

It was this variety of industry and products that contributed to Loughborough’s optimism during a time of general depression, however, other parts of the country, where industry was centred upon perhaps one product, like coal or shipbuilding, were not faring so well. What Starkey missed by only one month, because his new cinema in Loughborough was not quite ready for use, was the visit made to the town by the Jarrow Marchers on their way to London to present a petition to parliament to request that their local shipyard be replaced by a steelworks, to help alleviate the problems of unemployment that were being experienced in the north-east of England around 1936.

The Jarrow Marchers were led on their journey by the MP for Jarrow, Ellen Wilkinson. The group left Jarrow on Monday 5th October, 1936, and stopped at Chester-le-Street; Ferryhill; Darlington; Northallerton; Thirsk; Boroughbridge; Harrogate; Wakefield; Barnsley; Sheffield; Chesterfield; Mansfield; Nottingham, before arriving at Loughborough Town Hall just before 6pm on the evening of Wednesday 21st October 1936. They were met by councillor George Frederick Fleeman, and members of the town council, religious, political and social groups. The petition the marchers carried with them was handed to the mayor for safekeeping overnight, before the group of nearly 200 were each served with a meat pie, mashed potato, bread and butter, and cake, which was paid for by the subscriptions of local people.

The walkers had travelled 15 miles [2] from Nottingham to Loughborough, a route which would probably have taken them past the new Odeon building, which at the time was under construction, and was within only a month of its official opening. Thus it was that Mr Charles Knight Deeming gave the Jarrow marchers, 200 seats in his newly refurbished New Empire Super Cinema, in which to enjoy a film, before they ate supper and before spending the night in the nearby Drill Hall. Early the next morning they would set off on the next leg of their trip that would see them arrive in Leicester, and be provided with tea by the Leicester Co-operative Society, and their boots mended by that society’s boot-repairing staff.

The Loughborough Odeon, opened in November 1936, closed its doors as a cinema and became a bingo hall in 1974, while the Empire was sold to the Essoldo chain in 1953, becoming known as The Essoldo, and then went through quite a number of name changes – The Curzon, The Classic, back to The Curzon, and then The Reel – before finally coming into the ownership of the Odeon in 2011. Today, the Odeon cinema has been joined by a new cinema, Cineworld, in a development off Baxter Gate, very close to the former Odeon cinema.

Cineworld, 2021

Meanwhile, as 1936 turned into 1937, the abdicated King, Edward VIII, married his Wallis Simpson, George VI was crowned, Neville Chamberlain became Prime Minister, there is an outbreak of typhoid fever in Croydon, and the social research organisation, Mass Observation, makes its first survey of social attitudes. In Loughborough:

“1937: Genatosan is taken over by the Fisons Group

1938: Land is bought on Derby Road for the building of an airport for Loughborough.

Closure of the Loughborough racecourse.

Hazlerigg Hall, now part of the university, is opened on June 15th.

1939: The second World War begins.

The Charnwood Forest Railway closes to passenger traffic.

Alan Moss buys Island House in Granby Street for £1,400.

Loughborough racecourse is converted into an airfield.”

- - PMP2000: People Making Places. Charnwood Arts, 1999

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Notes

[1] This is the miles stated on a type-written itinerary held at the National Archives

[2] In my opinion, this is more likely to be the miles walked from Nottingham to Loughborough. when you consider that Mr Yates (story in two parts - 1 and 2) walked from Loughborough to Nottingham and back each day for 7 days, and covered 183 miles, that works out at about 15 miles each way.

This article was originally published in 'Destinations', Sept 2021, pp.15-21, under the title 'The Reel history of Loughborough's cinemas', and is reproduced here by kind permission of the Society for One-Place Studies, with slight amendments.

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posted by lynneaboutloughborough

With apologies for typos which are all mine!

_______________________________________________

Thank you for reading this blog. You are welcome to quote passages from any of my posts, with appropriate credit. The correct citation for this looks as follows:

Dyer, Lynne (2022). Jarrow Marchers and Loughborough cinemas. Available from: https://lynneaboutloughborough.blogspot.com/2022/10/jarrow-marchers-and-loughborough-cinemas.html [Accessed 21 October 2022]

Take down policy:

Blog archive and tags:

If you are viewing this blog in mobile format, you will not be able to easily access the blog archive, or the clickable links to various topics. These can be accessed if you scroll to the bottom of the page, and click 'View Web Version'. Alternatively, there is also a complete list of posts, which when clicked will take you to the page you are interested in.

Thank you for reading this blog.

Lynne

Sunday, 30 May 2021

Visit to Nanpantan Hall

Nanpantan Hall, situated on Nanpantan hill, on the way out of Loughborough towards the Charnwood Forest, is one of those places that you can just about see from some of the footpaths and permissive paths in the area, but it is not generally open to the public. True, it is available for hire for events and weddings, and is used as a learning space for students of the independent School of Philosophy and Economic Science, but it is not open to the public. However, over this bank holiday weekend, the house and grounds have been the location for a unique art exhibition, in which ‘history meets’ art, as the publicity said, and has been open to all, subject to pre-booking and adherence to the COVID-secure procedures.

For once I was on the ball and managed to get myself booked in for a visit, although I did get the last available ticket for the day, so I couldn't have been that prompt! Anyway, it was a wonderful occasion to be able to visit a building that has so much historical importance and connection to our town, and once inside, I had a good look around at the art work, at all the family photographs, the documents and possessions, and also watched a short film about the house. There was plenty of opportunity to talk to the artists and the stewards on duty and it was fascinating to hear their stories and learn from them.

The grounds were also open to visitors where there were a few stalls – a willow-weaver, a stone mason and Charnwood Arts, to name some – and the farm (Home Farm) was open for refreshments and were doing felting demonstrations. I actually took a bottle of water and an apple with me, so I stood near a bench with a beautiful view to have these in the open air, rather than inside.

The walled garden was also available to walk through, and again, there were plenty of expert gardeners on hand to help with gardening tips, as well as learning the history of the gardens, the buildings on the site, and some of the gardeners who had been employed in the past.

As well as being installed in the house, artwork could be found in the grounds, like the pair of willow horses in the meadow, and the pieces of paper, filled with visitors’ comments, strung up on a washing line hanging amongst the volcanic rocks.

Apart from the exhibition and the artwork, other things to see were things that are always on the estate: some beautiful rhododendrons; horse chestnut trees; sheep – the list goes on and on, but obviously changes with the seasons!