Key

J: = Interviewer, Julia
GA: = Interviewee, Gillian Atkinson
[time e.g. 5:22] = inaudible word at this time
[5:22 IA] = inaudible section at this time
[word] = best guess at word
… = interruption in sentence, trailing off or short pause

GA: We moved from… my husband retired and we moved from Hull to Newbiggin, Temple Sowerby. In 2005 Sara Braithwaite, who was the custodian at the time, she was given a pot of money to advertise for Apple Day which takes place on the second Sunday in October. This had been something that had been going for quite some time but it was getting bigger and bigger so she advertised for volunteers and I replied to that. So I was involved in Apple Day; the first one I was involved in was on 16th October 2005. Yeah, 16th October 2005, and I loved it. They put me on admissions and I’m very bossy and I love organising. So they asked me if I would join the Apple Day Focus Group, and that was set up in 2006 and we had the first meeting 25th January. This Apple Day was a really big thing, it was fabulous, absolutely fabulous.
So they obviously got to know me and in May they signed me up as a casual worker. So I was in the shop, which was in the Dovecote at that point, and admissions from September to December. So I got to know people and they got to know me, I think, which is important with a small team, you’ve got to know who you’re going to have within your very small core team. And in 2007 I was invited to interview for the post of Property Administrator and that was a permanent part-time job and I’d be working at Acorn Bank and also at Tower Buildings. And at that point the property portfolio was Eastern Valleys because it changes every five or six years.
So that’s when I started, 2007, and most of the house was closed and my office was you had to walk into… you just walk past the whole of the house, the frontage, into the courtyard and through the kitchen, where the kitchens are, and my office, well there was only one office, was in the little room there, overlooking the courtyard. So there were three computers there, the gardeners were in there as well, Sara and me and there was also the catering manager, so it was a bit squashed really. But it was brilliant. When it was hot we used to have the windows wide open, looking out onto the courtyard. It was absolutely magic and I stayed in that job, in actual fact, until I retired in 2015.
I started off, as I say, as a volunteer since 2005, I’ve been a volunteer ever since because any Apple Day work, you weren’t paid for that, it was all voluntary otherwise they wouldn’t have made any money at all. Then Property Administrator and that was redefined as Property Portfolio altered and I stayed as a Property Administrator until 2015. Stayed on as a volunteer and the lady who was in charge of the tearoom at that point was Sarah Swindells who was brilliant, she turned the tearoom round. And she said to me… I said I’d like to volunteer in the tearoom because I wanted to be away from the office so that I didn’t stand on the toes of the girl who took my place, I thought that was unfair. I needed to be well away from the office. And Sarah Swindells said to me, ‘No, don’t volunteer, become a member of staff.’
So I became a catering assistant for… I was only there for a year, I think. And they had me in the kitchen a lot of the time. I think in the first three months I lost half a stone because it was such hard work. Since then I have just… I’m in total awe of anybody who works in a tearoom or in a kitchen because it is such hard work. But I loved it, absolutely loved it, it was totally different. I had the job that I had to wash all the pans or help make the scones or clear tables or wash the floor, wash the loos of course, and it was just magic, absolutely magic.
So I stopped that in 2016 and we moved house at that point. So I used to just live six fields away and my husband and I, we retired to Kings Meaburn. So at that point I obviously stopped working and was a volunteer and helped organise events and things like that. And then my husband died, which was very sad, in 2020 and[Sarah Greening, who is now in charge of visitor welcome and all sorts of things, she said would I like to become a Visitor Welcome Assistant. And I so started that, then we had COVID, of course, so that went by the board. I did that for three years and then I finally retired. My end date on my staff card is 24th November, so on Sunday.
The tearoom, as it is now, that was opened in 2000. Before that I think they used to just serve teas out of a window in the courtyard and it was certainly an honesty box, 1999 onwards there was just an honesty box for people to see the gardens. The gardens were open before the tearoom opened. So, as I said, the tearoom opened in 2000, the shop and visitor reception in the main house… the shop isn’t there anymore but visitor reception was in the hall, that was in 2012. And I was a volunteer at that point so I was doing visitor welcome as a volunteer in the hall and it was freezing, absolutely freezing. But at Christmas, we must have been open at Christmas during that year, because we did have the Christmas tree, we had Father Christmas and we had the fire lit. Oh, it was just amazing, absolutely amazing.
In 2013, this is just an environmental thing, the biomass boiler was put in in 2013 so before that we were oil and we were the largest consumer of oil in the whole of the National Trust, or certainly in our area.
And we have 176 apple trees, varieties of apple trees and we have 275 medicinal herbs.

J: Where did they get all the different apples and who decided what sort of apple varieties you would have?

GA: Well obviously the orchard would have been there, the older trees, and it’s all written down somewhere. And Chris Braithwaite, who was Head Gardener, Gardener in Charge was his title, so he, along with Hilary Wilson who is an absolutely… she’s called the Apple Lady of Cumbria, she knows every… Give her a leaf and a twig and an apple and she can tell you what it is, she’s brilliant, absolutely brilliant.
Tuesdays and Thursdays we used to have tours of the house and Sara Braithwaite used to lead one and various other people. I never did that because I was too busy, I’d got my own job to do. They’d start in the hall because the hall is full of history and then, depending on what interested the tour guide, that was how they slanted it. But I often stood in the hall listening to them and the history is just amazing. People have lived here since 1228 so it’s just a fascinating thing.
It just has a wonderful atmosphere. You walk in and your shoulders go down. We’ve said all along, the ambience is just lovely here, it has a lovely feel. And the people who work here, they’re very relaxed and we just love Acorn Bank. I’m not particularly bothered about anything, any other properties in the National Trust, I just love Acorn Bank.

J: What do you think contributes to that atmosphere? You talked about the people but anything else about the environment you’re in?

GA: The view, the view is sensational. And it’s quiet and it’s history, isn’t it? It’s in the walls and it’s just fascinating. I don’t know what it is but it’s a lovely place. Or I wouldn’t have stayed so long.

J: Have you been down to… you’ve obviously been down to Crowdundle Beck?

GA: Well, I used to walk my dogs regularly so I’ve walked it with my dogs over the years. It’s just the calm and being by water; they say it’s the best thing, be it sea or river, it’s very, very good for you. I only read that the other day and I thought, well, I’m lucky because I live by a river in Kings Meaburn and I used to work by a river here. It’s just lovely.

J: How have you seen the property change?

GA: Yes, it’s been lovely to have it open. The first room they opened was the hall and they decorated that and it’s a beautiful, beautiful room. And it was fascinating when… then they did what is now the second-hand bookshop and that was the shop, the retail shop. The drawing room, I’m not absolutely certain about it but I think there were 16 layers of paint on it and they could identify them all. And the colour it is is one of the colours that was on when it was painted. We looked at the colours and they were really very garish but that’s how it was then. So the rooms that they’ve done, unfortunately it’s not very many, they tried to keep the continuity.

J: What would you like to see at Acorn Bank in the future? How would you like it to change or is it something that you just want to … ?

GA: Just be used properly. It would cost a fortune, you can’t. But the panelled room is just wonderful, isn’t it? We’re using it for meetings at the moment and it’s lovely. The atmosphere is absolutely brilliant. And there are quite a few staircases in Acorn Bank which… I think there may be five but there’s a secret one that the staff used to use, obviously, the housemaids and things. A little spiral staircase in the tower over there and the stone steps are lethal because they’ve been used so much they’ve been worn away. You’ve got to be really careful. And also it is… the owner at the time must have been left-handed, so we’re going back when they had swords, so he could defend it taking his sword out like that, which is why the stairs go round the wrong way, because he was left-handed.

J: You must have had a lot of dealings with visitors and things in the years.

GA: Yes, yes.

J: Can you summarise the sorts of things they say when they visited here?

GA: They love it. It’s so rare to get somebody who is difficult, it is very, very rare. Everybody comes out saying, ‘Oh, isn’t it lovely?’ And it’s the feel of the thing, it’s what it feels like. And a lot say, ‘Oh, isn’t it a shame that we can’t see more?’ And, yes, it is a shame. But some people, you get them in any business I think, come to make trouble and you just have to be incredibly polite to them and think ‘You poor person.’

J: And what is your favourite part of Acorn Bank? If you could spend two hours somewhere, where would it be and why?

GA: Well if it’s a sunny day in the walled garden. I used to take my lunch out there. I’d want to be where somebody else is so we can talk.

J: That’s a lovely answer.

GA: In the summer, of course, because of course we used to have these holiday flats along here. So in the summer these had people in them and the windows were always wide open and people’s heads… you know, they were hanging out, looking at the view. That was really… it was lovely when we had the holiday flats, it was really nice. No, it’s just the view, that’s what changes and the garden changes.
1228 Knights Templar and then there was the suppression, beheading, it was the Catholicism. One of the main beheadings of the Knights Templar was on Friday 13th October 1307 which is where bad luck on Fridays, Friday 13th is always a bad luck day, it goes back to 1307. That’s Knights Templar.
1323 the Knights of the Hospital of St John lived here. So Knights Templar lived here in 1228, 1323 that was the Knights of the Hospital of St John. But there was dissolution of the monasteries by Henry VIII, in the north the dissolution of the monasteries happened in 1540 and in 1543, so this was empty, the house was bought by Thomas Dalston. The estate remained in the hands of his descendants until 1930, passing through the female line three times. And in 1930 Dorothy Una Ratcliffe bought the house and in 1950 the National Trust took it over. So those are the dates that we used.
The house, parts of it are 16th century, the main block is 16th century. It was rebuilt in the 17th century with the new façade, that’s 1690. So that’s your Georgian windows, sash windows, they were added in 1740. And in 1880 the Boazmans mined gypsum around the property and that’s where they made their money. And gypsum is now mined about six miles down the road at British Gypsum. Well, it isn’t British Gypsum anymore, it’s French owned. And the tearoom opened in the house, the shop and visitor reception in the main house in 2012 and the biomass boiler 2013. So those are all the dates that… I would use that for visitor reception.

J: You know in the tearoom when you go inside, what was that room originally used for?

GA: It was where the carriages were kept for the horses. Obviously the stable lads, they used to live above where the horses were. We’ve got graffiti, we’ve got very posh graffiti. There are about five bits of graffiti and we all decided that it was obviously pouring with rain, freezing cold and they were bored to tears. And somebody had a diamond ring so there are various bits. There’s a cousin that’s signed his name, very definite signatures.

J: Which window is that?

GA: In the hall, as you walk in the main door the window in front of you. And the glass is the original penny glass, it’s so thin. In the hall, the big arched windows, that’s jackdaws aren’t they? Although they don’t look like jackdaws. And where I live in Kings Meaburn we’ve got Jackdaw Scar so there’s relevance to jackdaws.
It’s just how things evolve and change. The dovecote, which was lovely, but is now full of apples, which is what we… we’re known for our apples. It was very bustling when it was admissions and it was the shop and we had the counter down the side. There is, in one of the stores next door to the dovecote, that’s where the safe was and it’s sunk into the ground so we had to… it was always quite difficult to get out. We had this enormous key to get into where the money was saved. But there’s also fireplaces and there’s the bothy and then there’s the rooms along there, they have fireplaces in as well.