On the origins of pumpkin carving....

Halloween as we know it today is in many ways an invention of the 1970s and 1980s, largely imported from the USA. But its roots run far deeper as a medieval Christian festival, the eve of All Saints’ day or Hallowmas (1 Nov) and All Souls day (2 Nov), on which candles were lit and bells rung as an aid to souls that lingered in purgatory.

Edgar, NT Pumpkin Support Coordinator

After the Reformation the Christian festival of Halloween faded away in many parts of the country. By the early 20^th century Guy Fawkes night had assumed pre-eminence for many, although ‘punkie night’ continued to feature in some places, and involved the parading of lanterns made out of root vegetables. In other parts this time of year was known for ‘souling’, when people would visit each other to present soul-cakes as commemorations of the dead. Elsewhere, 31 October was also known as Mischief Night (Miggy Night in Yorkshire), when tricks were played on neighbours by knocking on their doors and running away, or swapping over the signs outside shops.

So if you are out trick or treating tonight, remember that there is more to this than simply a commercialised import from America – underlying it is a tradition stretching back more than a millennium, to mark a time of year when the spirit world was deemed closer than usual to its earthly counterpart.  

There’s plenty of spooking happenings at National Trust places too, from the scary trails at Sheringham and Peckover to Pumpking Carving at Dunstable, Sutton Hoo and Wimpole and Batty Halloween at Hatfield and Wicken Fen. It all sounds fantastic half-term fun!

(This based on Steve Roud's The English Year (2006))

Mmmm Skyscraper, I Love You

 I was lucky enough to visit Balfron Tower this week, to see the latest innovation in the National Trust’s London programme. Balfron Tower is a hi-rise that dominates the landscape near Poplar in East London – or at least it did, before it was dwarfed in turn by the skyscrapers of Canary Wharf. Balfron was designed by the architect Ernő Goldfinger, whose modernist home in Hampstead is owned and displayed by the National Trust.

Goldfinger was a controversial enough figure in his day – so much so indeed that Ian Fleming (a near neighbour in Hampstead) used his name for one of his villains in the James Bond books. But Goldfinger was nothing if not an enthusiastic pioneer of new ways of thinking about life, buildings and the spaces around them. The 27-storey Balfron Tower, with its ‘streets in the sky’ connected from a single service tower, was a distinctive social vision aimed at providing a solution to post-war housing needs. It adjoins the equally visionary Lansbury Estate, named after the socialist George Lansbury, which had its origins as part of the Festival of Britain (1951).

Balfron Tower is now a building on the cusp of a new future. Its current residents are mostly artists and architects, who live there as the ‘guardians’ of the place. Soon, they will be leaving, as the place is taken over by Londonewcastle for refurbishment of the Grade II-listed flats.

Before it does, the Trust stepped in to show off one of the apartments in its 1960s hey day – the very apartment, in fact, that Goldinger himself moved into in 1968 in order to test the liveability of the place. The designer Wayne Hemingway and his daughter Tilly were invited to dress the flat at number 130 as if it was 1968 again, and a family were living there. There are echoes of the Domestic Wing at Anglesey Abbey therefore, in the recreation of a 1960s interior that will be familiar to many. From the winceyette  bedspreads to the posters of the Beatles and other pop stars of their day, the place was dressed with a lovely attention to detail. (Although I did wonder if the clean-shaven Beatles on the bedroom posters were a few years out of date for 1968?)

There is also an excellent guidebook, featuring the best ever cover I have ever seen on one of our guides. Inside, an attempt is made to link Goldfinger’s work with that of our founder, Octavia Hill, given that both shared a concern for the open green spaces between buildings. In truth, I think Octavia would have been appalled by the brutal modernism of Balfron Tower, but it is an interesting thought nonetheless that Goldfinger was in some way the heir to the housing endeavours that Octavia Hill had been pursuing in London a century earlier.

A more solid link between Poplar and the National Trust however comes with the figure of George Lansbury, the Suffolk-born radical socialist who became so closely associated with the east end, serving as councillor for Poplar and then Labour MP for Bow and Bromley. Lansbury’s public campaigns for social justice gave rise to the term ‘Poplarism’ as meaning the local defence of the less privileged against the demands of the centre. Lansbury went on to become the Commissioner for Works (in other words, heritage minister) in the National Government of 1929-31, and later Leader of the Labour Party.  (The Hyde Park lido on the Serpentine was known as Lansbury’s Pond, since it dates from his time in ministerial office.)

Lansbury, grandfather of the actress Angela Lansbury, knew Octavia Hill. The two of them sat on the Poor Law commission of 1905-09 (Lansbury would have been in his 40s at the time, Octavia in her 70s). They were on opposite sides, since Lansbury signed the Webbs’ minority report that heralded the beginnings of state welfarism, whereas Octavia signed the majority report in favour of reforms to the existing Poor Law system.  Lansbury went on to serve as vice-President of the National Trust in the 1930s, and was closely involved in the saving of Sutton House, a story told by Patrick Wright.   

So, although 130 Balfron Tower might be a time-limited ‘pop-up’, there are more links between Poplar and the National Trust than might first be the case.

PS Ageing hipsters will have noticed that the title of this blog comes from the Underworld album Dubnobasswithmyheadman, which marks its 20^th anniversary this year. In a recent Guardian interview, Karl Hyde relates how the album was influenced by his late night walks around London, and was intimately informed therefore by the psychogeography of the city. “To me this album was Romford, Soho, Canary Wharf, the A13 corridor, the transition from a changing suburbia.” The perfect soundtrack to the Balfron experience? 

Sanctuary at Dunham Massey

I spent two days this week at Dunham Massey in Cheshire, attending a regional directors’ meeting. The venue was chosen in order to showcase two very exciting new additions to the property. First, it has a fantastic new visitor reception, including a beautifully arranged shop and a very busy catering outlet. But also, and opening just a few weeks after the visitor centre earlier this year, Dunham also boasts the Trust’s latest interpretation success story:  Sanctuary from the Trenches.

The General Manager explained to us that the whole project blossomed from a moment of inspiration that he had one evening. Knowing that Dunham Massey had been a military hospital during World War 1, he wondered what it might be like to re-present the house as if it were a hospital once again. He tried the idea out on his team, and found that lots of people loved it, including many of the 500 or so volunteers. And so, two years later, Dunham Massey’s main rooms were emptied of their furniture, and replaced by metal hospital beds and all manner of audio-visual echoes of the Great War (including very clever use of recorded sound at various points on the visitor route).

An especially evocative feature of Sanctuary is that the property has employed a company of actors to recreate the parts of several of the people who had been at Dunham Massey, either as patients or nurses. The actors act out scenes at various times during the day, amongst the crowds of visitors. It is a highly engaging piece of theatre, as we watch one of the nurses read out a letter from home to one of the soldiers who has lost his sight in battle, or we overhear the blossoming romance between a patient and one of the nurses. (In real life, they went on to marry.)  All the stories were exhaustively researched, using records held at the house and elsewhere.

Sanctuary has certainly put the property on the map: there’s been a significant increase in visitors, helping to meet the costs of setting up and running the show.  The acting transforms the historic interior of Dunham Massey, and we see the property in an entirely new light: as a site of drama and tragedy, a consequence of the country’s involvement in the war.  The forging of the connection between the mansion and the wider world was the subject of our subsequent discussions, as we explored how the Trust’s approach to interpretation might develop more generally in the future across our properties.

Sanctuary shows the value of taking a few risks with our approach to interpretation, which needn't simply be confined to showing our houses as static displays. Anglesey Abbey’s Domestic Wing has shown a similar sort of creativity – and it’s exciting to think of where the next big opportunity might be for this sort of intervention at our historic places.