As a new member of the House Team, one of the first tasks I got to grips with was the daily clean of the house. The morning is spent cleaning the showrooms and making sure the house is ready for our visitors, who will start arriving at 11am.
Equipment for the daily clean
The daily clean is an essential part of the routine in any Trust property, and at Standen, the duties are shared between the Assistant House Steward, two Conservation Assistants and myself.
The deep clean…
Our deep clean is our chance to really get to grips with our showrooms; annually inspecting and cleaning them from top to bottom.
The deep clean used to take place during winter months, when many Trust properties closed their doors to visitors, and put the house contents ‘to bed’. These days, however, many properties are open almost year round, and need to carry out much of their deep cleaning work in front of the public.
This summer at Standen, our deep clean revealed an outbreak of carpet beetle in one of our showrooms. This needed to be dealt with straightaway – while the house was open to visitors!
Carpet beetles have munched holes in this Morris carpet (click to see an enlarged version of photograph)
The carpet beetle outbreak was obviously a big problem for our collection (an original William Morris carpet was at risk of becoming seriously damaged by the bugs), but it was actually a great opportunity to highlight to our visitors the importance of inspecting and cleaning our collection, and acting swiftly when needed to prevent further damage.
As a trainee, it was good for me to see the process, and how we dealt with it: in the case of this outbreak, we treated the carpet with a mild insecticide specially formulated for use in historic environments, and a smaller hearth rug was put in the deep freeze to get rid of any remaining pests.
We hope we caught the problem just in time, but we’ll continue to monitor this room carefully…
Standen 