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description=Behind the scenes with the National Trust s team in the Lake District - welcoming visitors to Hill Top, the Beatrix Potter Gallery and Wray Castle.;

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we were split into two main teams the salvage team and the recovery team once the fire brigade had given the go ahead the salvage team were suited and booted to enter the building to salvage historic items i was part of the recovery team whose job it was to receive the items from the salvage team and administer first aid treatment to the water damaged objects in the designated safe area of course the items being salvaged in the exercise weren t part of east riddlesden s historic collection so a water logged copy of bridget jones diary was one of the items we had to treat this item went into our make shift wind tunnel which we had created using upturned tables polythene sheeting and a couple of fans the fire engine outside east riddlesden hall at the end of day once the exercise had ended we met with the fire brigade to review how the task had gone overall everyone was very pleased with how we had coped with the situation taking part in a practical exercise helps to simulate what a real emergency situation would be like and prompts us to consider the finer details needed to help us prepare for them the day helped me acquire new skills but i just hope i never have to use them so i will sign off now whilst touching all available items made of wood roisin assistant house steward hill top beatrix potter gallery posted by nt south lakes houses team at 10 00 email this blogthis share to x share to facebook share to pinterest 9 october 2015 bloomin foreigners firstly i feel i must apologize for my absence from the blog this summer a combination of lots to do and a touch of writers block and suddenly it s autumn again misty autumn morning the summer in the lakes has been average at best with lots of rainy days interspersed with some sunny ones but since the schools went back as is often the case we ve had the best weather of the year so far verging on the mythical indian summer i talked about in a previous blog perhaps because of the little and often supply of rain this summer the garden at hill top has done pretty well the borders were full of flowers in june july and august and the flowering season seems to have gone on longer than usual i even seem to have kept on top of the slug population in the veg garden and produced some reasonably good crops i m particularly pleased with my black kale this year black kale one downside of the rain is that the grass has carried on growing all year normally the drier weather in summer slows its growth down a bit and i get a break from trudging round after the mower but this year it just kept growing and growing and growing fortunately there isn t much grass at hill top although the village verges need doing regularly but at the other garden i look after at monk coniston there is rather a lot all i can say is thank goodness for a good pair of earphones and an itunes playlist on my phone there s been a lot of talk about immigration over the summer and i recently got to thinking how many of our favourite garden plants are actually immigrants themselves even in a quintessentially english cottage garden like hill top kaffir lily top of my list at the moment is hesperanthera coccinea used to be called schizostylis but it changed don t ask me why the kaffir lily which is a native of south africa and is flowering merrily in hill top garden a very long way from home its crimson flowers provide a welcome splash of colour late in the season although one point to note about the kaffir lily is that the flowers always face towards the sun probably looking longingly towards their homeland so don t plant it on the southern facing side of a path like i did or all you ll ever see is the backs of the flowers another cottage garden favourite the dahlia originates in mexico where the aztecs used the tubers as a source of food they re closely related to jerusalem artichokes indeed they were introduced into britain for that very purpose but proved more popular for their decorative properties than their culinary ones i ve never eaten dahlia tubers but they d look a whole lot nicer in the veg garden than a row of potatoes an import from peru incidentally dahlia crisps anyone dahlias yum yum the list of foreign plants in hill top garden goes on and on chinese wisteria japanese quince eucryphia from chile sneezewort from the usa even that most english of flowers the rose has species from asia america and north africa all of which have made their way into the varieties we grow it s the same story with fruit and vegetables jemimah puddleduck s rhubarb originated in china runner beans in central america and even peter rabbit s favourite radishes hail from south east asia so i think it s true to say that without these foreign imports our english country gardens would be frankly pretty dull and our english cuisine duller still for my musical link this time i could have had illegal alien by genesis or immigrant song by led zeppelin but they re both pretty awful so i ve gone with an american theme and chosen this on the subject of immigrants and this about cutting grass bye for now words and pictures by gardener pete posted by nt south lakes houses team at 14 20 email this blogthis share to x share to facebook share to pinterest labels cottage garden dahlias garden immigrants hill top 31 july 2015 b is for beatrix and birthdays beatrix and i have something rather special in common it s both of our birthdays this month by the time that this post goes up on the tinternet it will have already been beatrix s b s is on the 28 th and mine it s today j i wonder how b would have celebrated her birthday i would like to think that she would have celebrated in some big way but really i think that she would have had a quiet one with william at her side you may remember my first blog post approximately 2 years ago now when i wrote about moss eccles tarn and coincidentally lost my car keys whilst trying to take some photos of the water lilies i told you how beatrix would draw whilst william would row on the tarn it sounds like a pretty idyllic day out on a summer s day last month i told you about my move to townend and well it s happened i m here and i m really enjoying it i found out a surprising connection between my newly adopted family the browne s who lived in and owned townend and beatrix whilst doing a spot of research on the house and the family for my tour i found out that b would visit townend when the last browne clara wa s living in the house we know that beatrix went and had a look around the house and is known to have passed comment on mr browne s prized carvings it is said that she called him the tiresome mr browne and that he had the outdated victorian habit of over embellishment clearly she wasn t a fan of the work he had put so much effort it to my dad has a very similar opinion he loves old furniture and antiques and doesn t like that someone has changed them in his eyes not for the better troutbeck however he loves but that s ok we all have different opinions on things and that s what keeps things interesting if you have a spare hour or so i think you should definitely pop over to the house up in troutbeck and come have a look around this lake district gem for yourselves can you tell that i m enjoying my time up here much if you re anything like me summer will make you think of the sunshine bbqs eating outdoors ice creams i ll look like an ice cream soon and beer gardens but one thing i ve been fancying recently is a spot of afternoon tea one of my favourite cups and saucers that beatrix owned is this little set they re rather striking and have always taken my eye and coincidentally i am told that they came back to hill top from troutbeck park farm just up the road officially this one is down as a coffee cup i m strictly a tea girl myself the smell of coffee i can do i can even handle a slice of coffee cake but the real stuff no thanks however that doesn t put me off i still love these with their gilt rims and painted flowers these pretty things were made by royal worcester in around 1870 saaucy ironically i used to hate pink i used to think it was a girl s colour yellow was my favourite colour and still is but now i love it and i love these i don t think of myself as one of those olden day ladies by any means but i could just see myself having a cup of tea in the garden with these and maybe a delicious scone as well with its new replacement handle this cup has certainly seen better days but on the flip side maybe it means that it s also been well loved and well used cup of tea they date from approximately 1770 made in porcelain the original handle was replaced with a woven rush one at some point but when it was attached a crack appeared at the bottom do you think that the cup was dropped overused or maybe it was always a tad bit wobbly i don t know but whatever happened to it and wherever it comes from i think it s absolutely charming they are one of a pair and the other cup and saucer are in good health but i like this damaged two piece better now usually my usual heelllooee there is something that i really like from the collection this time it s awkwardly something that i don t like that much it s these two people i don t know what the heck they are doing i ve always thought that they might be dancing gossiping or just generally hanging out i don t know what they are doing but like the previous cup and saucer they are one of a pair dancing in the moonlight think having two of these is a good thing na it means there are two of the things to look at don t get me wrong i would never try and hide them behind something so they can never be seen but personally they re not my sort of thing they re staffordshire and made between the late 19 th and early 20 th centuries each ornament has both a girl and a boy they have white hair painted brown blue shoes and shells around the base they re just odd haha on that bombshell i ll be off to london where we ll be celebrating my birthday have an absolutely fantastico weekend i hope the sun shines where you are ta ta for now words and pictures by natalie posted by nt south lakes houses team at 10 00 email this blogthis share to x share to facebook share to pinterest labels beatrix potter behind the scenes birthday care of collections collection conservation hill top lake district london natalie nataliecooper national trust south lakes 26 june 2015 travelling in style thinking about how to begin this month s post i realised that beatrix and i have a few different things in common a rather snappy dress sense a thing for the sheeps i am welsh after all or at least that s my excuse and we both have a bit of a thing for adventurin g around a nd exploring new places beatrix may never have ventured out of the united kingdom but she sure got around exploring a lot of different places within the country something i love doing there are all kinds of journeys long ones which require a multitude of snacks small little ones that zip past and those you remember for a variety of reasons if you have peeked at the hill top and beatrix potter gallery s facebook page over the last few weeks you will have seen that michael portillo brought his railway journey up to the lakes to see b and the team at hill top he was here to find out more about beatrix her friendship with hardwicke rawnsley and the part she played in the formation of the national trust i was lucky enough to be able to see some of the filming at hill top i didn t quite get my on screen debut just yet but watching it happen was interesting so keep your peepers peeled for it on the tele in the near future micheal p may favour the railways for his journeys but this isn t the only way to travel check out this amazing ship that we have at hill top land ahoooyyy to say that i don t know much about ships is a huge understatement and my experience with them is pretty limited unless rowing a small wooden boat on durham river counts with these long arms i m practically made for rowing so to find out more about this vessel i ve done what all good detectives would do i googled this is a three masted ship and apparently made by a sailor between 1870 and 1900 ish from my research aka scrutinizing lots of images of ships i m going to make an educated guess and say that this is a type of schooner these are sailing vessels with two or more masts often designed for trades that required speed and windward ability trades like pirating ohh arrrg with all those sails i imagine that it would have had no problem zipping through the waves or lakes a slower more sedate unconventional and downright feathery mode of transport is this month s heeeellooooe there sure maybe you wouldn t want to use him for long journeys mainly because he is extremely dinky in real life and to be honest he s a bit out of practice after having been in a cabinet for such a long time i know what you re thinking a swan is not a mode of transport but i would counter this with have any of you seen doctor doolite the original of course he had this amazing great big pink sea snail and no one questioned this as a mode of transport when it was time for emma to head back to london i absolutely love this film but back to the swan wit h a fleur de lys pa inted on one side of his body and a lady in traditional dress knitting on the other it could have possibly been produced by quimper faience in brittany france this pottery s design reflects a strong traditional breton influence and a lot of the older pieces are strongly sought after luckily for us this little guy is staying firmly at hill top this year s top model pose he may be petite but he wears some pretty flamboyant eye makeup i mean red eyeliner that s a bold statement but he is definitely working this look i myself might give it a miss with my extremely pale skin i worry i d end up looking scary rather than spectacular whether you choose a ship or a swan to complete your journey you ll need to have a general idea of which way to go don t you this is down as an ornament on our inventory it lives in the ivory cabinet but to be honest i m not completely sure of it s actual purpose or even if it has one some things are just because what are your thoughts on it the hand in the middle twizzles around and to me could point you in the right direction in my mind the numbers could even be routes does this make any sense or is it just something in my mind my other thought about it was that it reminded me of the big hand from the old lottery adverts it could be you anyway i digress this object came from london and is marked on the bottom h rodrigues 42 piccadilly london but apart from that we can only guess about its history could this have some to beatrix from her parents or grandparents along with the other bits and bobs of ivory my own history with hill top and beatrix has only been relatively small about 2 and a bit years ish but like beatrix i m going on another little journey of my own i m happy to say that i ll be working over at townend...