We are nearly ready to open for the Easter weekend, starting on Good Friday at 11am.  We are running our popular Easter Egg Treasure Hunt, which this year extends the egg pun to: Easter mEGGa  Hunt, with clues around the castle and grounds giving visitors the chance to win a very large chocolate egg; if consumed too fast, there will be a definite breach of the Government’s healthy eating campaign, but it will be delicious…

Behind the scenes, a lot has to be done before we open the doors.  Spring cleaning has to be finished, ropes and signs put up, the DVD for visitors unable to walk up the stairs checked, the dog bowls filled (we welcome dogs in the house with well-behaved owners), items sent away for restoration returned and put in their places. Outside, we have put new gravel in the courtyard and car park, repainted the village signs, restored the lake weir and tidied up the many fallen branches brought down by the earlier snow falls.  The tea tables will have been placed in the tea room yard, though it may be a bit chilly for those who normally like to sit outside, and the visitor centre will be clean and ready for action.  We have arranged for visitors with Privilege Cards to be fast tracked through the entrance, which should be good for them and shorten any queues.  The shop has been restocked, though if this weather continues, the demand for ice cream may not be too high.

The daffodils, if not covered by snow, should be out, and the playground ready for action, with its repaired swing and the Burma bridge, which was very popular last year when it was new.  We have planted a lot of young trees in the grounds, something future generations should appreciate if the rabbits and squirrels do not get them first.  At least there is no drought at the moment, so they are having a good start.

We hope to have a busy weekend, whatever the weather.  My coal-fired traction engine should be in the Courtyard in steam on Easter Day, and a wood fire will greet visitors every day in the Great Hall, giving a genuinely warm welcome in what may be EGGstreme conditions for the time of year…

JH-B  25th March 2013

Last year, under the Higher Level Stewardship scheme, we accepted a grant managed by Natural England to help restore the machinery in Clencher’s Mill, an old water mill on the estate about a mile from the castle. We had maintained the mill building, and the machinery, including the water wheel dated 1820, had luckily remained in situ as opposed to being removed for scrap. The mill had worked with water power until the 1920s, when the miller and the farmer, who farmed the land where the water entered the mill leat, had a row, and the supply was cut. The machinery then was powered by a tractor until the 1940s.

We were encouraged by Alan Stoyel, the local representative of the Society for the Protection of Ancient Buildings-Mills section, who wrote a synopsis of why the mill was important within the Herefordshire context and by the John Masefield High School in Ledbury who wanted to bring students to see the sustainable plant in action as part of the school curriculum. English Heritage was helpful too and an important part of the grant approval process. We were keen to start in the autumn, but the bat survey revealed we were not alone in the mill, so we have had to wait until their hibernation ended before moving in.

We selected Dorothea Restorations the trading company of Wallis Conservation Limited, as they had the experience of our sort of mill and were based not too far away. In the first image, you will see the wheelhouse with a large gap at the top where the water should be held in a pen trough or launder before being released through a sluice onto the overshot wheel. In the second image, you see Zenon Jurkow on the left and Julian Beel on the right, preparing to assemble the new oak boards of the replacement launder.

After being empty for almost 90 years, the pond and leat have needed a lot of additional work, some of which will be funded by the Malvern Hills AONB Sustainable Development Fund.  In another blog, I will describe some of what we have had to do to link the pond again with the stream and the regulatory hurdles we have had to cross.

JH-B   11th March 2013