National Trust - Penrhyn Castle

[AMJ]

Quite a few of the locos are (or have moved depending upon when you read this) to new homes from the stable block railway museum

 

Fairy Queen has already departed and is temporarily going on display at VOR in Aberystwyth until it's new home at Llanberis is ready.  A press release has was seen earlier today about this move.

 

One loco is going to it's city of birth and upon an appropriate press release happening I will then say which loco and where you will then be able to see it.

 

For info see

https://www.nationaltrust.org.uk/services/media/penrhyn-castle-plans-to-share-more-about-its-industrial-history-in-a-new-experience-as-it-rehomes-some-of-its-locomotives

 

[sir douglas]

17 minutes ago, AMJ said:

.One loco is going to it's city of birth and upon an appropriate press release happening I will then say which loco and where you will then be able to see it.

 

 

If its you saying this, it must be Leeds

[MarcD]

It was a nice little museum. We have been a few times. A shame it's being broken up.

Marc 

[papagolfjuliet]

On 22/01/2024 at 16:16, sir douglas said:

 

If its you saying this, it must be Leeds

 

It's Hawarden, going to the Middleton Railway. Vesta is going to the East Lancs. I gather that ownership of the Coal Tank is being transferred to the Bahamas Locomotive Society. That leaves Haydock and Kettering Furnaces No.3 and Beckton No.1; one of these three is going to somewhere in Kent (Beckton No.1 to Chatham docks perhaps?). About a decade ago Haydock was due to move to Beamish but could not be removed from its corner of the building at Penrhyn. Perhaps that transfer will now go ahead?

[AMJ]

Hudswell Clarke locomotive Vesta arrived at Bury transport museum on East Lancashire railway 24th January 2024. Locomotive was shunted into place via fellow Hudswell Clarke no 32. Vesta operated at Shotton steelworks and 32 worked on the Manchester Ship canal network

[AMJ]

As speculated by @papagolfjuliet

0-4-0ST "Hawarden" HC 526/1899

This morning on the track in Leeds at Middleton

[pete_mcfarlane]

On 22/01/2024 at 18:51, MarcD said:

It was a nice little museum. We have been a few times. A shame it's being broken up.

Marc 

It seems to be symptomatic of wider issues with the National Trust. 

[papagolfjuliet]

54 minutes ago, AMJ said:

As speculated by @papagolfjuliet

0-4-0ST "Hawarden" HC 526/1899

This morning on the track in Leeds at Middleton

 

 

Well, I wasn't speculating. Somebody connected with one of the new custodians told me so.

Edited January 26 by papagolfjuliet

[papagolfjuliet]

1 hour ago, pete_mcfarlane said:

It seems to be symptomatic of wider issues with the National Trust. 

 

I hold no brief for the NT - far from it - but to be fair on this occasion it should be noted that while Penrhyn was a nice little museum it was impossible to photograph or even get a decent view of most of the exhibits; the narrow confines of a stable block are hardly ideal for displaying standard gauge engines. The museum was also a hangover from a period in the 1960s when it was NT policy to concentrate collections of particular items at particular properties: railway equipment at Penrhyn, Harpsichords at Hatchlands Park, dolls' houses at Nunnington Hall, and so on. It was an odd policy at the time and it is also odd that the collections remained in situ for so long after the policy was abandoned.

 

 

Edited January 26 by papagolfjuliet

[Wheatley]

15 minutes ago, papagolfjuliet said:

 

I hold no brief for the NT - far from it - but to be fair on this occasion it should be noted that while Penrhyn was a nice little museum it was impossible to photograph or even get a decent view of most of the exhibits; the narrow confines of a stable block are hardly ideal for displaying standard gauge engines. The museum was also a hangover from a period in the 1960s when it was NT policy to concentrate collections of particular items at particular properties: railway equipment at Penrhyn, Harpsichords at Hatchlands Park, dolls' house at Nunnington Hall, and so on. It was an odd policy at the time and it is also odd that the collections remained in situ for so long after the policy was abandoned.

Agreed. For me the collections at each property should have some relevance to the property or the area, not just random collections of stuff. And railway engines should ideally be on or at least near railways.

 

If the previous owner of the house collected railway engines or owned Hudswell Clarke (for example) then that's different as they're part of the story of the house. Likewise if the previous owners were a succession of slave owning union bashers then that's (part of ) the story that should be told.

 

Your mileage may vary. 

[papagolfjuliet]

13 minutes ago, Wheatley said:

If the previous owner of the house collected railway engines or owned Hudswell Clarke (for example) then that's different as they're part of the story of the house. Likewise if the previous owners were a succession of slave owning union bashers then that's (part of ) the story that should be told.

 

Your mileage may vary. 

 

And there's another good reason for dispersing the collection: I know quite a few people around here who would never set foot in that hateful family's hateful house (whose gatehouse was designed to resemble that of Wormwood Scrubs as a constant reminder to Lord Penrhyn's employees and tenants of what would happen to them if they put a foot wrong) and so paradoxically have a better chance of seeing the locos now that they are no longer on display there.

Edited January 26 by papagolfjuliet

[papagolfjuliet]

Update: Haydock is going to the Isle of Wight Steam Railway, and Kettering Furnaces No.3 to the Waterford & Suir Valley Railway.

[009 micro modeller]

On 26/01/2024 at 17:29, papagolfjuliet said:

 

I hold no brief for the NT - far from it - but to be fair on this occasion it should be noted that while Penrhyn was a nice little museum it was impossible to photograph or even get a decent view of most of the exhibits; the narrow confines of a stable block are hardly ideal for displaying standard gauge engines. The museum was also a hangover from a period in the 1960s when it was NT policy to concentrate collections of particular items at particular properties: railway equipment at Penrhyn, Harpsichords at Hatchlands Park, dolls' houses at Nunnington Hall, and so on. It was an odd policy at the time and it is also odd that the collections remained in situ for so long after the policy was abandoned.

 

 

Agreed. Part of me (the railway enthusiast part) will be sad to see them go, but on the other hand that’s partly because Penrhyn Castle is convenient for me to visit when I visit relatives in North Wales, whereas other people will be able to enjoy the locos at their new homes. I also agree that the concentration of collections by type, rather than relevance to specific location, was odd - I’ve always thought of National Trust country houses as being quite specific, place-based heritage sites, whereas a subject-based museum is a very different concept. In this particular case though collecting the locos at Penrhyn Castle was probably the right decision, as otherwise they may not have been preserved at all. But the changes being made now are probably the right decision too - they fit in well with the wider aim of trying to give a more complete picture of the house itself, as well as the industries that financed it and the people who worked in them. And if this also leads to the more locally relevant locos (and other rolling stock) being redisplayed and interpreted in a more interesting way and others going to more appropriate homes then it seems generally quite positive.

 

Regarding the specifics of this, if it had been up to me I’m not sure I’d have pared down the collection quite as much - potentially Fire Queen, for instance, might have formed an interesting part of the display to emphasise the very early use of steam railways in the slate industry and the fact that there were multiple competing quarry-owning families in the area. But again, that’s still a bit tenuous if the idea is to tell the story of Penrhyn specifically in more depth than previously (and of course Fire Queen itself is significant in its own right, and is eventually supposed to go back to the nearby location where it worked). Presumably it’s going to be in the care of the National Slate Museum when it gets to Llanberis?

When this was first talked about a few years ago I did wonder if they would transfer them around to other, more appropriate sites within the National Trust itself, but they seem to all be moving externally. Are they loaning them (as with Hugh Napier) or transferring the ownership? Having re-read the articles about Watkin moving to Caernarfon a few years ago I think it may have actually been privately owned and on loan to the Trust, but I was still under the impression they owned the other locos themselves.

 

I’d also be interested to know where Beckton No. 1 is going (I presume it is moving as not really relevant to the location).

 

On 26/01/2024 at 16:47, pete_mcfarlane said:

It seems to be symptomatic of wider issues with the National Trust. 

In what way?

 

7 hours ago, papagolfjuliet said:

Kettering Furnaces No.3 to the Waterford & Suir Valley Railway.

The other combinations of new homes and locos that have been identified so far seemed sensible but I’m not sure with this one. The others all seem to have some sort of historically relevant connection* (some less direct or more tenuous than others, admittedly) but I’m not sure what the link is in this case other than the gauge. (Just an observation, and I’m not suggesting for a moment that they won’t look after it well etc. etc.)

 

*even Haydock going to the IoW - it’s apparently similar to another loco that once worked on the island.

[009 micro modeller]

On 26/01/2024 at 17:57, Wheatley said:

Agreed. For me the collections at each property should have some relevance to the property or the area, not just random collections of stuff. And railway engines should ideally be on or at least near railways.

 

If the previous owner of the house collected railway engines or owned Hudswell Clarke (for example) then that's different as they're part of the story of the house. Likewise if the previous owners were a succession of slave owning union bashers then that's (part of ) the story that should be told.

 

Your mileage may vary. 

Exactly. It would be different if it was simply an old country house, now used as a museum with no direct connection between the museum collections and the building’s previous history. I know a couple of museums like this, that were essentially established by philanthropic local gentry turning over a large and often no longer needed house to their local council, simply to provide space to create a museum for the community. Interpreting and preserving the building’s own history wasn’t really the main concern in those cases. But at Penrhyn Castle (or similar sites) it’s supposed to be about the history of the house itself (and placed in the proper context, so the sugar and slate industries, including some of their less pleasant history, absolutely are relevant here).

[pete_mcfarlane]

11 minutes ago, 009 micro modeller said:

In what way?

There seems to be a lot of change for changes sake, in this case breaking up a museum collection that's been in situ for the best part of 60 years. A quick google should bring up some of this - some of which seems to basically be a culture clash between the younger London based types who run charities like the NT and their members and volunteers, who tend to be older people from the shires. 

8 hours ago, papagolfjuliet said:

Kettering Furnaces No.3 to the Waterford & Suir Valley Railway.

Are they going to restore it? The C&L has restored a 3' gauge Avonside from one of the Ironstone tramways near Grantham, so there's a precedent for this. 

[009 micro modeller]

39 minutes ago, pete_mcfarlane said:

There seems to be a lot of change for changes sake, in this case breaking up a museum collection that's been in situ for the best part of 60 years. A quick google should bring up some of this - some of which seems to basically be a culture clash between the younger London based types who run charities like the NT and their members and volunteers, who tend to be older people from the shires. 

I’m aware of the “culture clash” and issues around that as I work in the heritage sector, however in the case of the National Trust a lot of the outrage (usually around research into links to colonialism) seems to have been whipped up and politicised by reactionary media outlets and their supporters, who apparently don’t want anything to be researched in a deeper and more nuanced way than before, or to have their existing worldview challenged. Ironically though, in relation to Penrhyn Castle I can remember going there about 10 or 15 years ago and seeing interpretation panels referencing both the Penrhyn Lockout and the family’s involvement in the slave trade, so exploring this side of the history in depth isn’t a wholly recent development.

 

But I’m not sure that’s directly relevant to the specific case of the railway collection at Penrhyn Castle anyway. What they’re doing now is really a normal collections review process, but on a vast scale. I’m not sure I completely agree about the details of the way in which the dispersal of the locos has been done in practice, but the principle of focusing the collection around the items of specific relevance to Penrhyn and allowing them to tell the story of the site’s history and local context more effectively (and display other relevant and interesting items that are currently stored and unseen, as mentioned in the press release) seems perfectly sensible. The point being that it’s a country house with a (very) locally-specific history rather than a general museum.

Edited January 29 by 009 micro modeller

[009 micro modeller]

43 minutes ago, pete_mcfarlane said:

Are they going to restore it? The C&L has restored a 3' gauge Avonside from one of the Ironstone tramways near Grantham, so there's a precedent for this. 

Is restoring it to working order necessarily a good thing in this case? I thought it was currently in fairly original condition having been a static exhibit for years, but wouldn’t be if completely rebuilt (similarly the NRM, with some notable exceptions, generally seems to now avoid operating collection locos because of the original material that would be lost by doing so).

[papagolfjuliet]

7 hours ago, pete_mcfarlane said:

 

Are they going to restore it? 

 

It's going for a contract overhaul somewhere in northern England.

 

And as I understand it ownership of all of the stock has been transferred. I gather that Vesta and Hawarden and the Coal Tank are all now owned by the BLS.

[papagolfjuliet]

No word as yet about Beckton No.1, but as one of the collection is said to be moving to Kent and none of the current announcements are anywhere near Kent it's fair to assume that the well tank will be heading south. Chatham seems an obvious choice, but that's just a guess. I can't imagine the KESR or Spa Valley having any use for it and I doubt whether the East Kent has the resources to look after it.

Edited January 30 by papagolfjuliet

[Hibelroad]

It’s a shame that this collection is being broken up, it was my sole reason for visiting the castle. However it was a rather strange set up and it is in the nature of collecting for items to move on to other collections. Knowing some of the strange decisions of the National Trust in recent years perhaps we should be grateful that these items are not to meet a more grisly fate or be locked away out of public sight. 

[009 micro modeller]

1 hour ago, Hibelroad said:

some of the strange decisions of the National Trust in recent years

Which ones in particular?

[papagolfjuliet]

18 minutes ago, 009 micro modeller said:

Which ones in particular?

 

Oh, you know. Refusing to rebuild a fire damaged stately home, posthumously outing a man who wasn't gay, turning another stately home into a massive children's play area, destroying a centuries old mushroom colony in the name of 'rewilding,' handing kids crayons at a third stately home and letting them scrawl all over the artworks, arbitrarily sacking all the volunteer park guides at a fourth stately home... 

I may say however that none of those unforced balls up were the reason why I gave up my NT membership and joined the National Trust for Scotland - which is less irresponsible, needs the money more, and has a reciprocal arrangement with the NT such that an NTS card gets you into to all NT properties. No, the final straw for me was the cover of the 2017 handbook. Yuck. No wonder the Collie looks embarassed.

[Happy Hippo]

Plus NTS membership is cheap than the NT! (Which is why I am an NTS  member)

[009 micro modeller]

20 minutes ago, papagolfjuliet said:

posthumously outing a man who wasn't gay, turning another stately home into a massive children's play area,

I can’t remember the details of the first of these, and the second one is a bit of an oversimplification of what actually happened.

 

The fire-damaged stately home is a more interesting debate. They’ve done a similar restoration before (Uppark) but I think in this instance felt that it would be better to conserve what’s left rather than creating a pastiche of what was there before the fire.

[papagolfjuliet]

I don't think it's that much of an oversimplification. Herewith the saloon of that property, which is Grade 1 listed and one of the best surviving Restoration houses in England. That's before we get to the massive DANCE LIKE IT'S 1699 neon sign, or the speech bubbles stuck to all the paintings.

 

The posthumous outing case relates to the donor of Felbrigg Hall, Robert Wyndham Ketton-Cremer, whom the Trust decided was gay because he never married. This notwithstanding protests by his surviving relatives and despite the fact that he was friends with both James Lees-Milne and Rupert Hart-Davis, two dreadful old gossips who never kept quiet about the sexualities of people they knew and yet never said a word about Ketton-Cramer.