Fairfax House shows detail of its winter clean process

Fairfax House in Castlegate showed off parts of its annual winter clean of furniture, books and displays alongside some of the ‘set’ rooms which make up the attraction.

Volunteer co-ordinator Evie Andrews and the team of 80 volunteers help with a deep-clean process which can take between four and six weeks over a period when Fairfax House is usually closed to the public.

Some of the usual 'set' rooms featured alongside the detail of the winter clean (Image: Kevin Glenton)

Evie said: “We’ve decided to show off what we can, to get people engaged with the process of what it is we do behind the scenes and how we get things looking the way they do.”

“We’ve managed to get some of our things out that aren’t usually seen by members of the public.”

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Some of the books on display in the library date back to the fifteenth century and Evie said these cannot be shown at all times because of the frailty of the paper and many normally stay bound in the bookcases.

York residents got to see examples of woodworm to a frame, which Evie said is a common problem in a house where the majority of the collection is made of wood.

Evie said some of the texts on display this weekend are not normally seen by the public (Image: Kevin Glenton)

She said a piece had recently dropped off one of the chairs in the collection and it’s the job of Fairfax House’s collections manager and assistant curator to ‘make sure nothing falls apart’.

Evie said: “We have to be extremely vigilant with it, so it’s great for the public to be able to see what goes into the clean.”

She also hoped that visitors seeing part of the process of curation and care for the displays – everything you see is catalogued in an annual condition report – might encourage more volunteers to step forward.

Some of the most delicate items to clean are fretwork on the tops of the furniture and all of the collection’s paintings are cleaned annually.

The kitchen at Fairfax House showed some plates which had benefitted from elbow grease to bring out the shine.

Plates in the Fairfax House kitchen show the process of the deep clean and the outcome (Image: Kevin Glenton)

Evie said: “We try to be a bit creative with a plate to show the level of grime that builds up, which we don’t really realise when a lot of the collection sits for a year at a time.

“One person might take ten minutes – a lot of scrubbing, metal polish with a microfibre cloth and then it gets buffed off with a fresh one.

“We do all of it by hand – you can end up with cramp but it’s incredibly satisfying at the same time.”