Bringing Back the Binns: Meet the Visitor Services Manager

Hi! I’m Helen, Visitor Services Manager at House of the Binns, near Linlithgow. Since starting this role nine months ago, I can honestly say no two days have been the same – you can never guarantee how things will unfold, however much you plan for the day!

House of the Binns has been the home of the Dalyell family since the early 17th century. Many famous, and some would say infamous, family members have played key roles in the history of Scotland. The house was given to the Trust in 1944 by Eleanor Dalyell but remains the family home to this day. The house has been closed to visitors for a few years due to a large-scale conservation project. Unfortunately, as with all projects in old houses, not everything went to plan, and we encountered several delays along the way. Now, the property has been repaired and restored where necessary, and is compliant with latest regulations. The collections too have been conserved in line with best practice, ready for our re-opening in spring 2023.

Our biggest task at House of the Binns was to replace the flat roof over two of the principal rooms: the dining room and morning room. However, this work had to be postponed due to the pandemic. At all our properties, basic routine checks and essential maintenance continued during the lockdowns but we had to put the major planned repairs on hold for a while.

The National Trust for Scotland is fortunate to have excellent external partners to call upon when undertaking specialist work, and the Bringing Back the Binns project has involved a number of skilled craftspeople. We have worked with several well-established Scottish family companies, including roofers, stonemasons, plasterers, electricians and decorators. Coming out of the lockdowns, the availability of specialist craftspeople was an issue as their skills were in high demand. Delays in scheduling work were compounded by a lack of materials and increasing prices. Without the relationships we have built with our specialist suppliers, we could have faced very long setbacks.

Once we were able to begin, and in conjunction with the Trust’s Conservation and Building teams, we decided to empty the collection from these rooms. Moving, condition-checking, cleaning and relocating 800 items was a major task, taking our three-person Collections Care team and two art handlers 18 days to complete. The whole collection remained on site and was carefully catalogued, with a report created for each item including information about where it is stored. Kirsty Redmonds from the Collections Care team will write about this in more detail in next month’s Bringing Back the Binns blog.

You can also listen to Episode 7 in the third series of our Love Scotland podcast to hear more about the cataloguing of the collection at House of the Binns.

In addition to the two principal rooms, other areas of the house have also undergone repair and redecoration – when a property has been left untouched for a few years, some deterioration is inevitable. All of the behind-the-scenes checks on electrical installations, and the upgrading of fire and intruder alarms and CCTV, were completed to schedule. The normal maintenance and surveying of a historic building has also been undertaken.

After a particularly wet June, we had a heatwave in the summer of 2022, which caused some problems with the early 17th-century ceiling in the High Hall. Cracking was noticed in a corner, which was monitored daily. Unfortunately, over a particularly hot weekend, some settlement occurred and we had to call on a ceilings expert to advise our plasterers on the best solution. However, as you can see below, it would be difficult to know now that the corner has been repaired.