Continuing our programme of sectional audits of English Heritage collections, we supported an audit of the Midlands Region archaeology store at Atcham, Shropshire. Considerable progress had been made since the general audit in 1994, although some issues still needed addressing. In response to constructive criticism from the contractors who carried out the audit, we are now reviewing the whole audit process.
Following the success of our first training course on the identification of museum insect pests, we repeated this course at Audley End House in January 1999, and held our first course on housekeeping at Audley End in December 1998. In view of the continuing demand for this kind of training from site staff, we intend to run a range of collection care courses every year. To support the insect pests course we produced a poster on the identification of the commonest insect pests, with support from the Museums and Galleries Commission and the Central Laboratory of the Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food. The poster has been distributed to all English Heritage properties and all registered museums, and is in continuous demand.
We continue to support the training of conservators by offering four student placements at Brodsworth Hall, South Yorkshire, in October 1998, to help house staff ‘put the house to bed’. This offers the students valuable experience of the practicalities of working in an historic house, as well as being of considerable benefit to English Heritage.
In November 1998 we organised ‘Conservation Future Challenges’, a brainstorming meeting for twelve conservation leaders and innovators at West Dean College. The proceedings of this meeting were published in 1999, and the main outcome was a series of recommendations for conservators on how to place conservation centre-stage and avoid its being relegated to a peripheral (and powerless) position in the museum world.
During 1998 we set up environmental monitoring equipment at Lichfield Cathedral to investigate whether condensation was occurring on the important seventeenth century Flemish stained glass in the Lady Chapel and causing the black paint to flake off. This involved a steeplejack abseiling from the roof of the Lady Chapel in order to attach sensors to the outside of the 10m-high windows.
The Environmental Management Review was issued in June 1998. This document reviewed the way in which the environment in our historic properties was managed, from the point of view of monitoring and control measures. Its principal recommendation was that the environmental requirements of the people who visit and work in the properties, the historic artefacts displayed or stored in them, and the fabric of the buildings themselves need to be considered holistically. To achieve this, greater communication and collaboration between the professional groups involved with these three aspects (Mechanical & Electrical Engineers, Collections Conservation and Buildings Conservation) needs to be encouraged.
