Project one: Selecting an archive: Time to think again

Feeling dispirited and frustrated after a visit to Erddig yesterday. Decided to drive there in the early afternoon, as Steve was able to look after the girls for a few hours. Very hot day. Overflow parking in a grassy field had just been opened when I got there. Short walk to the entrance. So far, so good.

Then when I got through the entrance, behind an elderly couple and her even more elderly mother, I was directed to the ‘Timed ticket’ desk to get an entrance ticket for the house. This was about 12.40 pm. Time on ticket was 2.30 pm! Decided to try and blag it to see if I could get into the house a bit earlier than the time on my ticket, but no go! Tried to get the young man on the door to see my point that as I was one person going in on my own, it wouldn’t make that much difference to the numbers inside, and that I had come specially to look at some textiles and hopefully be able to draw them. Still no go.

So I decided to go back to the ‘Timed ticket’ desk to see if I could get anywhere with the young women there, but again was given the same line that they couldn’t possibly let me in before the time on my ticket, and it was a busy Sunday, and perhaps I should have arranged it all by telephone beforehand. So I then decide to go and sit in the shady gardens of the Tea Room, and get sucked into buying a coffee and a scone (very dry, probably not helped by the very hot weather!) and share a shady table with another couple. But there are lovely flowers in the garden, very cottage garden flowers, so I do some drawing.

Decide at this point (about 1.40 pm) to try my luck again, maybe ask for the manager this time. But this time a different woman on the desk says they have been talking about me (!) and says that someone has handed in a ticket for an earlier time (which has already passed?) and that she will speak to the young man on the door by walkie-talkie AND I can go straight into the house.

So I head in, trying to find the particular silk and linen embroidery that I have researched online (http://www.nationaltrustcollections.org.uk/object/1151859) created in the late eighteenth century by Anne Jemima Yorke, but cannot see it anywhere, and none of the volunteers I speak to know it or its location in the house. The other exhibit I wanted to see was some Chinese wallpaper (http://www.nationaltrustcollections.org.uk/object/1153114) but although I have no problem finding it, this time it is behind a thick glass or perspex screen which is protecting the whole of the State Bedroom from decay.

Very frustrating day, I think I will have to rethink the source of my archive textiles for the next project!

I did however, take some nice photos of Erddig, which may provide some other inspiration: