English Heritage Helps to Stop the Rot at Elizabeth Gaskell's Home
The Manchester home of the Victorian novelist Elizabeth Gaskell will be the subject of a major repair programme thanks in part to an English Heritage grant of more than £260,000. The grant allows for the repair of the roof to prevent leaking, repair of rotten windows and cracked walls as well as removing the dry rot which is eating its way through the house. These critical structural repairs will arrest the house's decay and ensure that it is weatherproofed.
Today the house is owned by the Manchester Historic Buildings Trust. The actress Dame Judi Dench, a patron of the Trust and star of the recent BBC television adaptation of Elizabeth Gaskell's novel Cranford, welcomed the English Heritage grant: "I am delighted that English Heritage is offering a grant to carry out the work that is needed on Elizabeth Gaskell's house. This is a major historical building and it will be wonderful to see it restored to its former glory."
The author of Cranford and North and South moved to the Italianate villa at 84 Plymouth Grove, Ardwick, Manchester in 1850. Announcing the move in a letter to a close friend, Elizabeth Gaskell declared, "And we've got a house. Yes! We really have. And if I had neither conscience nor prudence I should be delighted, for it certainly is a beauty." The house had seven bedrooms, two large reception rooms, a study (for Elizabeth's husband, William Gaskell, Unitarian minister of Cross Street Chapel), and two big attics. There were also kitchens, a scullery, pantry, outhouses and a large garden, a source of much pleasure to Elizabeth.
She lived there with her husband and four children until her death 15 years later in 1865 and wrote most of her novels in the house. As her fame and reputation grew, Gaskell welcomed to the house Charles Dickens and Harriet Beecher Stowe, author of Uncle Tom's Cabin. Gaskell's friend Charlotte Brontë stayed there three times, describing 84 Plymouth Grove as "a large and cheerful, airy house". Brontë was so shy that, on one occasion, she hid behind the curtains from the other guests. Charles Hallé, founder of Britain's longest established symphony orchestra, regularly visited and gave music lessons to Gaskell's daughter, Marianne.
Quite apart from its literary connection, 84 Plymouth Grove is, architecturally and historically, particularly significant. The ornate Italianate villa is a relatively rare survival of an early Victorian villa in Manchester. Built in about 1838, the Grade II* listed house shows a remarkable degree of survival, with the main ground floor reception rooms virtually intact. The building however is slowly decaying and at high risk of irreparable damage from dry rot and water seeping through the roof. It has been on English Heritage's Heritage at Risk register since 1998. The house is owned by the Manchester Historic Buildings Trust and the grant is an important first step in their long-term project to restore it completely, open it to visitors and refurbish parts of the interior as it was in Elizabeth Gaskell's time, providing space within it for the local community to use.
Henry Owen-John, North West Planning and Development Director at English Heritage, said: "Mrs Gaskell chronicled the economic and social history of the industrial revolution in her novels. The house where she wrote much of her work is an integral part of the story of this dynamic period when Manchester's textile industry was at the forefront of world trade. It is vitally important that this building is saved from dereliction so it can help to tell the story of Manchester and the industrial north."
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