My Wynpol Journal: On a Roll

Well since I keep forgetting to bring my camera when I’m doing forestry, I thought I’d post another from my day a week doing textiles. It was two weeks ago, so it’s going to be a bit of a drag on the old memory but I’ll do my best! I find a few photos usually help with that. Just on a side note for all those folks who live in the UK, Don’t forget up on all the action from behind the scenes at the National Trust currently being shown weekly on ITV. I haven’t appeared on the programme yet (except for a few background shots with my fellow co-workers) but I am sure we all will at some point!

Anyway, back to the point… this post is us working on one of the carpets that run down the back stairs. So if you’re afraid of heights look away now! Ok, this is looking up but you get the idea.

So you might think taking up a stretch of carpet is a relatively simple task. Well I thought that too until I actually started doing it!

The one on the John Soan stairs is perhaps not as important as some of the other rugs and carpets seen throughout the Hall but it still requires the same amount of attention and care when rolling it up.

First job is to unhook the stair rods that hold the carpet in place without causing a trip hazard. Yes, I know me and a flight of stairs with trip hazards is a little problematic I admit!

Still after a little bending and deft finger work (those rods were quite tight!) we had them out in no time.

Following inspection of the carpet and seeing how many sections we would be lifting (or rolling) it in, we had to separate each one out. Then we hit a problem. The section I was sorting out was a little trickier than the others (It's always me that gets the difficult stuff!). The darn thing would just not come up and I didn't want to yank it too hard in case I ripped it. On closer inspection, literally millimetres from the carpet, I could just about see a tack.

Having called Mary over to get her opinion, the next few minutes we of us struggling to find even an edge to the tacks so we could get a grip on it. Even with a screwdriver we had very little luck so unfortunately in the end we had no option but to pull the tack through the carpet. Definitely not a recommended conservation technique!

Also not the way to secure a carpet in the first place. Even worse was when we finally got it up, we found that it was tacked into lead sockets to hold it into the concrete!

What the... ?!

With the carpet separated into three distinct sections it was down to the simple task of rolling up each section. We lifted these one at a time up on to the top landing so we could roll them up, placing the first two together to save on materials.

A quick vacuum and clean before hand was adequate for this set of carpets, and they were quite dirty! Almost as if a forester regularly used them perhaps... (sorry boss). Now nicely spruced up a layer of acid free tissue paper was rolled out on top of the carpet to protect it as rolled up.

Mind that banister rail!

Now as you can see, the corridor is only just wide enough to roll the carpet! Maggie did a sterling job rolling the first section up while I was snapping photos! Still I did my bit too, wait until you see the magnificent job we did on the curtains.

For those of you thinking of rolling your own carpets, remember to roll with the carpet and not against it. If you stroke the carpet you can actually feel how rough it is when you move your hand across in a particular direction. Oh and don't forget to turn the rug or carpet over before you roll!

Both the top landing section and the first stair section were rolled up in this way, the only exception being that when we came to roll the next section we lifted the rolled up landing piece on top so they rolled together (Maggie, correct me if I remembered incorrectly).

So what's the next step? Wrapping the sausages in Tyvek of course! As you can see (below) we take careful measurement of the object we're going to wrap and cutting it precisely to size. Or if you want that translated, roll out a length of tyvek, place said sausage in the middle and run the scissors down the length and pray you haven't just cut yourself just short!

Carpet sausages!

There; two nicely parcelled up carpet sausages. By the way, no string or sellotape was used in this production. It's amazing when you enter the world of conservation the sorts of things that can affect fragile textiles and upholstery, anything from ply-board to glues and other nasties. That's why we only use cotton tape to secure carpets, curtains and other fragibles. I just made that word up on the spot! Pretty neat... huh? If your wondering, it means more than one fragile item.

Apart from the underlay, which we rolled up into itself (no paper needed this time) and stacked all the individual steps, the only thing left was to protect the brackets for the stair rods. This involved cutting little squares (or rectangles if you want to be pedantic!) and tying them on each and every one. Although a little daunting at first, it didn't take as long as we originally thought, which was a good thing!