Ickworth House near Bury St Edmunds prepares to reopen for 2022 season after winter closure

As we enter Ickworth House’s Rotunda, there is a peaceful sense of calm.

The shutters are closed but in the dim morning light Suffolk News photographer Mecha Morton and I can see the outlines of furniture and treasures underneath dustsheets, hidden from view.

But all of that is about to change, as Ickworth property curator Chloe Woodrow tells us.

“This is the week we are starting to throw the covers off and get ready to open again,” she says.

Apart from a few days at Christmas, the house, in Horringer near Bury St Edmunds, has been closed to the public since the end of October.

“The winter period allows us to focus on our conservation work,” says Chloe.

“We do a deep clean. We take each room and go from the top to the bottom. We put up scaffolding and get as high as we can to the ceiling and work down.

“It is what you might do to your own home for spring cleaning, but on a bigger scale.”

As part of the project each object in each room is thoroughly checked to assess its condition and whether it has changed over time.

“We clean almost everything,” says Chloe. “For paintings we might dust the surface of the canvas using soft brushes to just lift the dust off. However some items, like chandeliers and the carpets, are cleaned in rotation and we don’t do them every year.

“Once we have cleaned an object we cover it and then it means it will not get dusty before we open again in the spring.”

For each room the process takes about a week, depending on its size and contents.

“I have been here 13 years and seeing it like this, during the winter months when the house is closed, it is how I imagine how it would have been in the 1930s, with the servants coming out to get the house ready for the family,” says Chloe.

“I feel like I know this house well. When I first came here I fell in love with it and I knew this was the property for me.

“During winter old buildings like this rest and you can hear all their noises and quirks.

“But spring is an exciting time. We throw the covers off and move the furniture back. We get it looking beautiful and we love to share the house and its collections with the public.”

In the days before reopening, the nine-strong house and collections staff team are joined by several experienced volunteers to get the house ready for its first visitors of the season – which could be a busy one.

“In terms of visitors, Ickworth has just had the busiest January and February we have ever seen,” says Chloe.

“House-wise, last year we had the same. We think it was because visitors were wanting to get out and see some culture and heritage and beautiful objects. We had a lot of visitors who were new National Trust members or new visitors, which was fantastic. Hopefully it will continue.”

Ickworth House was the vision of the 4th Earl of Bristol, who was known as the Earl Bishop.

On inheriting the Ickworth Estate, the Earl Bishop had a vision to build a house to be a museum or art gallery, with the Rotunda his home and the East and West Wings to be gallery spaces for the thousands of objects he had amassed from abroad.

“We talk of ourselves here as a ‘treasure house’ as we’re not really a country house and we have got all these important collections,” says Chloe.

Started in 1795, the building was still a shell when the Earl Bishop died in 1803. His son was left to complete his vision.

Later generations of the family lived in the East Wing and instead mainly opened the Rotunda for parties or special occasions. The West Wing was built purely for symmetry and remained an empty shell until 2003.

In the 1920s, the 4th Marquess decided to ban smoking in the house and chose one room to be the ‘Smoking Room’.

This week, the Smoking Room is one of the spaces undergoing final preparations ready for reopening.

“In this room we tend to change the paintings around each year to get the essence of an art gallery. We have got two paintings which were in this room currently at the Tate Britain, which will be coming home soon,” says Chloe, who estimates 70 per cent of the Ickworth collection is on display at any one time.

“The rest is in protective storerooms. Over the past two years we have had a major roof project so 2-3,000 items were moved to different storage areas of the site as a result. Now we are moving them back again,” she says.

Meanwhile, in the upstairs Silver Room the only preparations needed for Monday will be to turn on the lights and open the shutters.

The room’s 800 pieces of silver and silver gilt were collected by the second Earl. He was an ambassador and part of his job was to throw ‘incredibly elaborate’ parties, but rather than being paid he was given an allowance of silver for the party which he could then keep.

Chloe says: “During the winter we take each piece out and check the condition, we clean inside the cases and then assess the silver and see if it needs any cleaning. If it is in good condition we don’t clean it at all, as if we can avoid cleaning it is better for the longevity of the object.”

Back downstairs, the bright colours of the Library carpet are evidence of some of this winter’s hard work.

The team strives to use traditional cleaning methods where possible, so the Library carpet was given a thorough beating to rid it of dust.

“We definitely burned some calories, but it was worth it.

“When visitors come it means all of our hard work is shared and celebrated. It is really nice to welcome people back,” says Chloe.

As well as a clean carpet, the library is home to 2,000 books, while there are 8,000 books in total across the house.

“And we think the majority of the family read them as there are notes in the margins and little notes to each other in many of the books,” says Chloe.

“The family would have used the library itself as their breakfast room and then sat in here to read or play games during the day.

“They would also have had their annual Christmas ball in here as well.”

The Hervey family owned Ickworth until 1956, when the 4th Marchioness gave it to the National Trust in lieu of death duties.

The family carried on living in the East Wing into the 1990s.