“This place has given me so much richness, interest and diversity”
Volunteer Inputs — Article written by Catherine Page for the Town House Times in November, 2012.
In 2007, Gilly retired from retail work. She had reserved a year for pure relaxation, but soon came to realise that she needed some sort of structure in her life. If possible, she wanted to do something that further developed interests she already had, such as arts and crafts and architecture. The Regency Town House appealed because it seemed to offer a whole range of options with which to get involved. After an interview with Nick Tyson, she started work here in 2008.
At first, she was somewhat taken aback by the lack of ongoing progress to the house. Very little seemed to be happening and for a week or two she appeared to be one of only two people involved, Ellen the archivist being the other one. However quite soon My House My Street started and she and the new volunteers went down to the History Centre to photograph Street Directories.
After a few months Gilly began to work alongside them on a different project: listing and archiving the plans of a renowned local architect, John Leopold Denman, who worked in Brighton between the 1920s and the 1970s.
Since then, she has become involved in doing street research on the North Laine for MHMS. She feels that she’s on the way to gaining a very thorough view of urban life from many sides of the spectrum — through books and papers which examine at the lives of working class people in the North Laine, thanks to MHMS, to plans of restorations of many of the local buildings thanks to the Denman papers and through actually working on an upper class house in Brunswick Square.
By 2010, MHMS was recruiting more and more people, so it was necessary to create a space for their weekly meetings and to this end she worked on the Decker’s Room and the kitchen at the far end of the ground floor. During this she turned her hand to a multitude of tasks. Although the work they were doing at the time was not restoration, through working alongside Nick she began to understand and respect his philosophy of working on an historical building, and so comprehend that this is a long and painstaking process and cannot be hurried. His aim is to re-create The Regency Town House as it was, not cobble together a facsimile. It’s purpose is to educate as well as to show. To this end paints and other materials are sent off for analysis and for this reason, in the room on the ground floor that has been relatively newly painted, there is a place on the wall where you can see the original paint and similarly when the lobby is finished it will show its’ original marbling.
However, as she points out, this work takes a considerable amount of time and money and funding for restoration is problematic.
As the most experienced member of a growing team of eager but novice restorers, Gilly keeps an eagle eye on the work going on and the next part of the house to be tackled is and will be the lobby. The key to working on it was the launch of the organisation: The Friends of the Regency Town House.
Many people have pointed out that the lobby made a terrible first impression, so it was agreed to tackle that next, and it was obvious that the first thing that had to be done was to strip the cornice of its hardened cake of paint. After some trial and error experimentation with chemicals, it was decided to remove at least the top layers of paint with steam. Over-enthusiasm can easily destroy the plaster work underneath, so Gilly and of course Nick are keen to emphasise the benefits of a more thorough and measured approach. The cornice is however, only the first step in a big and complex task.
All of this constitutes for Gilly a unique journey: learning all the time, and taken in the company of similarly curious friends. She says “This place has given me so much richness, interest and diversity. Nick will allow you to work on your own if you’re interested in something — and working here is like having a whole box full of toys. I can’t think of what else I would have done.”
Postscript by Paul Couchman: Gilly, 5 years later, is still volunteering at the Town House and acts currently as our Volunteer Coordinator. We are relaunching The Friends of the Town House, the lobby has had another makeover and Gilly still enjoys the company of many new enthusiastic and curious volunteer friends.
