How many staff and volunteers can you fit inside Wray Castle?

The answer is............ nobody knows! But its quite a lot!!

Today was the grand opening of Wray Castle for the 2013 season but if you had seen how the Castle looked at the start of the week you may have thought that opening day was weeks away. Luckily for us we had an amazing group of volunteers on a working holiday at the Castle all week and they have worked miracles: dusting, hoovering, carpet cleaning, putting up shelves, throwing out the rubbish, painting blackboards, linseed oiling the portcullis, polishing floors and panelling, the list is endless.......

The volunteers were also joined by a wide range of staff; we had members of the Retail Team, Ticket Office Team, Wray Castle House Team, Direct Labour Team, Consultants, our very own Digital Media Guru Linda and of course the South Lakes Ranger Team. And as if that wasn't enough we brought in the big guns in the form of 'The Lengthsmen'!



Here is Harriet, a member of the Wray Castle Team with one of our back up members of staff!




Lottie, Christina and Corrin, also part of the Wray Castle Team giving the Oak Staircase a dust and polish.



Brian and Eric from the Direct Labour Team taking a quick break from making desks, putting up signs and helping fit out the shop.

Retail Manager Gill shows us that its not just men that can use power tools!



The Ranger Team and Volunteers survey the laying of the AstroTurf and the building of a dry stone wall!

The Castle looks amazing and it has been a real transformation this week from a dusty, dirty and rather messy building site to a polished visitor attraction.

The finished shop looks fantastic in the former music room.

We have added lots of new features this year, like a shop, new interpretation, a site managers office and some new furniture. Some of the best bits of last year we have kept and made even better- like the Castle Building activity that all kids and big kids thought was brilliant!



Our new Castle Building Blocks.

 Whilst everyone else was hard at work, dusting, hoovering, painting and moving furniture about, I was swanning around (or should that be flying around) in a cherry picker high up above the Castle. This was a very important job however, as we need to have lots of documentary photos of the Castle now that the roof has been fixed, but it did feel a bit like I was skiving off work!!




Me, doing a very important job taking photos!

Wray Castle is now open 7 days a week, 10am- 5pm, and not even snow can stop us! Hope to see you there soon.