Local History

If you think that spring cleaning your home is a chore, imagine cleaning a stately home or an historic house.

BBC Radio Solent’s Jon Cuthill visited Kingston Lacy near Wimborne to see how the National Trust keep such a huge property spic and span.

Rob Gray is Kingston Lacy’s house and collections manager. He explains how the changing times have made housekeeping more difficult.

“Now there are just seven of us cleaning and maintaining the house. In its Victorian heyday, there would have been 12 to 15 servants. And not quite so many visitors!”

Jon Cuthill

Kingston Lacy attracted a record 180,000 visitors last year. Each of these visitors brings in their own amount of dust and dirt.

Yet it’s these visitors that makes Rob’s job worthwhile. “We try to maintain high cleaning standards to give visitors the feeling as they walk into a room that the family have only just left.”

Kingston Lacy was the family seat of the Bankes family from 17th to 20th century. The family had previously lived at Corfe Castle. The keys to the castle are still on display on Kingston Lacy’s library wall – of little use after it was destroyed in the English Civil War.

The Bankes collected hundreds of pieces of fine art and antiques over the generations. On display are paintings by Rubens, Van Dyck, Titian and Breughel as well as numerous family portraits.

William Bankes brought back most of the antiquities that form part of the house's collections. He travelled extensively to the Middle East and North Africa, bringing back even a giant obelisk which stands in the grounds of the house.

Kingston Lacy is open to visitors 10:30 – 17:30 until 28 October.