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After a busy season at Hill Top with an excess of 100,000 visitors through the house, Sunday 3rd of November is the final day Hill Top will be fully open this season. Upon saying goodbye and thanking the very final visitors out of the door, closing the final shutter, taking away the final vase of fresh flowers and stopping Beatrix's favourite Wag-tail cuckoo clock for the final time, the house and it's contents will begin a few months of well earned rest over the winter season.
Standing outside Hill Top over the winter, you may be fooled in to thinking all is quiet and peaceful inside, but our house staff and volunteers will arrive (with their thermals on) laden with brushes, dusters, hoovers and tissue paper (not forgetting the all important tea bags and perhaps the occasional cheeky biscuit) to begin the process of putting Hill Top to bed.
Take a look and this short video, starring some of our House and Collections staff and volunteers. It is a fantastic insight as to what we do behind closed doors in the winter months at Hill Top.
The preventative Conservation work completed in the house over the winter months cannot completely prevent Hill Top from deteriorating but it certainly slows the process down. The work is essential to keeping Hill Top open to visitors for generations to come, so that in another 100 years our great, great, great grandchildren can still come and experience the magic of seeing an original Beatrix Potter illustration, or see where she sat and wrote her stories.
The Hill Top gardens and shop are open throughout the winter months, so if you happen upon one of the team during your visit, please ask us more about the work we are doing in the house over the winter. We will be happy to answer any questions.
We would like to thank everyone who has taken the time to visit us at Hill Top this year. Our staff and volunteers have thoroughly enjoy sharing our stories and inspiring people to know more about Beatrix Potter, along with caring for the house she loved so much. We will open our door again in February 2014, but for now, Good Night...
| The oak front door at Hill Top |