Why we love Haddo House

Transcript

Three speakers: Claire Russell (Visitor Services Supervisor); Teri Stevens (Visitor Services Supervisor); Libby Thomas (Visitor Services Supervisor)

Claire
My name is Claire and I am Visitor Services Supervisor for the National Trust for Scotland here at Haddo House.
The house was built in 1732 by the 2nd Earl of Aberdeen for his third wife, Lady Anne Gordon.
It was built by William Adam and it's a Palladian-style mansion, with a centre block and two wings at either side.

We have three guided tours -- they are roughly about 75 minutes long. You get to come in and see the bedrooms, the chapel, the dining room, morning room, drawing room.
I really like the morning room; I think it's got such a warm feel to it. It very much feels like someone could come in it any moment.
We have an important room upstairs: we have Queen Victoria's bedroom. It's important because Queen Victoria stayed there during her visit in 1857, but also it's the room where we had 1,200 babies born during the Second World War, when the house was a maternity home.

I just love the history of Haddo. It's got such a strong connection to local history, to Scottish history, to British history.
There's always something new, every time you come in here. Every day you're learning something new, from different parts of the family to different parts of the building. You didn't realise that there was a door there or what was behind the door!
I really like the history of Haddo.

Teri
My name is Teri Stevens. I am a Visitor Services Supervisor and I'm based at Haddo House.
Working for the National Trust for Scotland is all-encompassing.
My role will vary from working with our tour guides, working with volunteers, to assisting the garden team with our garden trails, to also assisting in the cafe and the retail teams to make sure that we're operational as a site.

The things that I love about Haddo in regards to my job is that it is visitor-facing, so you get to hear and talk to people every day.
Things I love about the property is the amount of potential that it has, in that there's so many different stories that can be told.
The National Trust for Scotland is all about nature, beauty and heritage, and Haddo has all of that in abundance.

We've got our retail team here; we've got a lovely gift shop.
We've got our cafe with an amazing team here, where you can get anything from a lovely serving of food to ice cream sundaes on sunny days.

The gardens and the broader grounds are basically a family haven to most people. They'll come here for picnics, days out and just somewhere to enjoy together.

Libby
My name's Libby. I work here at Haddo House, the National Trust for Scotland's stately home in the North East of Scotland.
My job here is to encourage people and enthuse them about the stories that we have in the house, and also to promote our wonderful strong arts legacy that we have here.
We're lucky to be home to Creative Haddo, which is three community groups that we host here that have called Haddo their home for decades.
We have our own children's theatre, our own choral society and Haddo Arts Festival as well, who bring in top-notch performers for all our audiences to enjoy.
It's pretty likely that if you come to visit, there'll be some live performance on that you could attend in the concert hall, or in the chapel or somewhere on site.

The house itself has got these wonderful north and south wings that stretch out like arms, so we say that Haddo welcomes you with a big hug, or as they say up here, a bosie!
Haddo does that for all of the people that she welcomes in her doors.
It has one of the most exemplary, top-notch tasteful Victorian interiors in the nation.

The garden outside the back of the house, the Terrace Garden, is a favourite of mine. We do a lot of events on there, and it's just gorgeous for families to explore.
It's a very tranquil and peaceful space, and it's full of colour. There's benches in nooks and crannies, and you can just sit with a book and enjoy.

What I love about the house is the warmth and nurturing feeling that emanates from its walls.
It's played host to so many thousands of people over its history, and we're still doing that.
Somehow, it has a special magic that people just tap into and take a little bit home with them when they leave.