At RHC’s meeting on 12 September, Joyce Huddleston showed photographs from the Club’s archives of Radley schoolchildren at the late Queen’s visit to Abingdon in 1956, and of the Queen at Radley College in 1997. This was followed by our customarily swift Annual General Meeting.
Sarah Somerville then gave the Club a ‘Guide’s guide’, describing her experiences working in two historic houses: Highclere Castle and Shaw House.
Highclere Castle is the seat of the Earl and Countess of Carnarvon. The 5th Earl sponsored Howard Carter’s excavations in Egypt, culminating in the discovery of Tutankhamun’s tomb in 1922. Visitors can see copies of the tomb’s treasures, which had lain forgotten at Highclere until the butler showed them to the 7th Earl.
The house is now better known as the fictional ‘Downton Abbey’. Sarah was fascinated to observe the hours it took the television crews to make a few minutes of film. From 2011, there were thousands of visitors a day. Staff had to balance the needs of the current 8th Earl and his family, the film crews and actors, and the visitors – and chase escaping sheep.
Currently Sarah is managing visitor services at West Berkshire Council’s Shaw House, Newbury. Built 1579-81 in the then expensive brick, with huge windows and chimneys, the house was requisitioned in 1939, became a school in 1943, but was unsafe and unoccupied from 1985. From 2003, it was expensively restored. It is now a conference centre and Register Office, open to the public at weekends and holidays. Keeping out damp, and maintaining the Elizabethan windows, continue to be a challenge.