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Nostell Priory

Emma Ward is the National Trust's House Steward at Nostell Priory. In the past an army of servants would be responsible for keeping a stately home like Nostell up to spec. Now all the day-to-day cleaning is done by Emma's team of four conservation assistants.

Like other National Trust houses Nostell suffers from a lot more wear and tear than when it was just a family home. Emma explains: "Sheila Stanton, the National Trust's first housekeeper, came up with the figure that these houses actually get twenty years of damage in a single year simply because the houses were only fully open when the family was there. Some of the state rooms would be only open for a fraction of that time when they had special guests so we do a lot more damage now than was ever intended."

But why does the house have to be closed in the winter? Emma points out how cold it is, even in November: "The heating system here is controlled by the relative humidity, the amount of moisture in the air, rather than the actual temperature, so we try to keep within a band that most objects from organic textiles to metals will sit in – that's 50 to 65%. The heating system only kicks in if it needs to lower the relative humidity in a room. You'll see everyone has got body warmers on. Some houses even provide thermal underwear.

Covering the furniture...

The house may be closed but it's Emma's busiest time of the year: "During the summer we just try to keep on top of the dust. It's in the winter when the fun begins and we can dismantle all the rooms and get things covered up. Three rooms a year get a full deep clean from ceiling to floor. All the other rooms get cleaned from the top of the doors down. People think we are quite genteel but we wear steel-toe capped shoes and we know how to whip up scaffolding very quickly. It's a strenuous job because you have to move very heavy objects very carefully."

We start our tour in the Top Hall. Designed to make a good first impression on the family's fellow aristocrats this is Nostell's main state room but in winter Emma's team use it as their work room because it has the best light. Furniture and ceramics are brought here from the other rooms where they are cleaned and covered.

Nostell Priory, built in the 18th century, has one of the biggest collections of Chippendale furniture in the country designed especially for the house as well as an important art collection including paintings by Breughal, Holbein and Angelica Kauffman. The Top Hall, Emma's winter work room, was designed by the celebrated architect Robert Adam.

In previous years fires have been lit in Adam's great fireplaces around Christmas when the house reopens for a week but the hearth has been split by the intense heat generated by modern coke fuel. This year visitors will have to gather around the fires in the Lower Hall but the Top Hall will have a big tree and other evergreen decorations.

The plasterwork decoration in this room is very detailed. Emma says: "In 2000 the house was closed down for a year for rewiring and every room was given a thorough cleaning with material called soap sponge which is the modern equivalent of bread. You just lightly use this to dust over the plaster and it draws the dirt out. All these rooms used to be much darker than they are now." This is also something you can do at home – use the soap sponge (also called chemical sponge) on textiles as well as plasterwork.

In the Saloon – the second most important room of the house - the only items not covered are the harp and the harpsichord. The housekeeping team will have to work around the instruments as the risk of damaging them when moving them elsewhere is too great. One feature of this room is its very large mirrors. Emma explains: "Conservation is as much about holding back. It's thorough cleaning in the past that's taken a lot of the silvering off so we just dust the mirrors down lightly. We don't polish them up anymore."

It helps to have a head for heights!

We look up at the so-called 'chocolate box ceiling.' Most of us can probably sympathise with Emma when she says: "You don't realise how many spiders you have in these rooms until you go up to the [ceiling] ledgers and start cleaning all the cobwebs off. This is where the scaffolding comes in. We actually use the same tools for every different type of cleaning. We've got a brush vacuum and you just vary the brush depending on what the surface is. We use very soft pony hair if it's painted with gilt or hog hair for brown wood, or something that can take a bit more."

The Tapestry Room is the first room to be deep-cleaned this year: "It's a military operation. We got everything out and, because we had building work last year which brought the dust out, we've actually cleaned the tapestries this year which you tend to do every eight years because they really can't take surface cleaning. You are as likely to pull fibres out of it as you are dust. You have to lay net all the way over and vacuum over the net."

If you've ever wondered why your curtains have faded there's a bit of science behind this: "Dust for something like a textile is hydroscopic - it attracts water to it. If you leave it too long, and if for some reason the water levels go up, then the dirt will impact into the fibres and make it more brittle and hard, and you'll lose your colour definition. Similarly if the relative humidity drops too low the fibres will become brittle and you start to get areas disintegrating into dust and splits opening up."

The fine ceiling in this room presents its own particular problems. Working for Robert Adam, Antonio Zucci, a Venetian, painted the design on paper and then applied this to the ceiling. In some parts you can actually see where the paper is beginning to lift up. Some damage has also been done to the ceiling by an invading pigeon!

The Tapestry Room had to be repainted in 1977 and, on the day we visited, Emma's team had just found the signatures of the artists who did the repainting inscribed in pencil just over the cornice together with the date just as craftsmen would have done in the past.

Antonio Zucci's ceiling!

The house has only been closed to the public for a few days and this is as far as Emma's team have reached. Next will be the Breakfast Room. The paintings will be taken down and documented – some of them will need a surface clean. Everything portable will be moved to the next room for cleaning and covering. The carpets will be left down.

Where carpets have to be taken up great care needs to be taken if they are rolled because this can raise the dust. Today Nostell's 'small' dining room carpet has been taken away for conservation – small it might be but it still took six people to get it downstairs! Emma has some advice for anyone thinking of moving a carpet: "We have to roll the carpet in a certain direction so you don't break the pile. You have to interlay and it's quite a time-consuming job. When I started here I was quite happy we didn't take all the carpets up."

If you think getting ready for a big clean is just a matter of packing things away in cases, that's not the way they do it at Nostell. Emma says: "We tend to put them back into the room after they are covered. We make tissue hats for them. Different properties do it different ways. We use staples."

And if you are just about to apply a damp cloth to your ceramics, think again: "Ceramics are another thing we brush vac. You can wet clean them but once that's been done it's just a case of keeping the dust down. Ceramics are difficult to wet clean because old repairs will be rivets and they go rusty if you get them too wet. Some old repairs might have been done with water-soluble animal glue. Old housekeepers often found they'd put a bowl in water and bring up four pieces because the glue holding it together had dissolved."

Busy!: Emma Ward @ Nostell

Nostell Priory might be very big but Emma has one or two tips which could be useful in any home: "A lot of damage is done by over-cleaning, particularly if you've got something like a gilt or a textile. Year upon year you can't see it happen but you actually do more damage by keeping it too clean. Similarly with metals – if you've got silver at home which is engraved if you keep on using silver dip (which we do use) then surely and slowly the silver tarnish becomes a layer of the silver so you are wearing away that definition. Pretty soon the engraving will disappear. The tarnish is actually its way of trying to protect itself from the sulphides in the air.

Similarly if you wet clean stonework, such as marble fireplaces, and the temperature changes then the cracks may expand. Emma says: "It's moderation in cleaning...We just try and do things simply by keeping on top of the dust!"

To find out more about Nostell Priory near Wakefield and its opening hours during the winter months,Μύclick on the link below to visit the National Trust website: