Staircase House, Stockport
Stockport, just south of Manchester, was established market town by the middle ages but it made its mark in English history chiefly as a symbol of the horrors of the industrial revolution.
An often reproduced view features a huge railway viaduct striding over a narrow valley stacked with satanic mills, which belch smoke and spew poison into a turgid river. Nowadays Stockport has cleaned itself up. The railway viaduct crosses an urban motorway and acres of supermarkets. Stockport also has an interesting portfolio of heritage sites.
First, in 1860, came a neat Italianate museum building, perched above a terraced municipal park. In the Victorian way, fresh air could be absorbed along with natural history, geology, local antiquities, and a collection of what were claimed to be Old Masters bought by a local Mr Smith on holiday in Rome in 1861.
Next came the Stockport Art Gallery and War Memorial in the 1920s. On the Cheshire side of town, there is a half-timbered Tudor manor house, Bramall Hall; and, on the Pennine side, the local council for some time administered for the National Trust a stone mansion on the moors called Lyme Park.
Recently, the portfolio has grown to include a country chapel, a hat museum in a closed hat factory, and a network of air-raid shelters tunnelled into the riverbank. Heritage volunteers maintain an art deco cinema.
Volunteers fought from the 1980s to save Staircase House, now restored by the council with help from the Heritage Lottery Fund, English Heritage, and the Northwest Development Agency. The house, named after its rare Jacobean staircase, stands in the hilltop marketplace, an enclave of mostly Victorian buildings.
On one side of the square, overlooking the iron and glass market hall (1862), there is the tourist office and premises in which local history collections will soon be redisplayed as The Stockport Story.
Unexpectedly, this row of buildings includes, behind a modern facade, one that has grown over several centuries. You enter Staircase House through the modern glittery shop, and are surprised to find yourself in an inner court, surrounded by medieval cellars that support a cruck-frame building with half-timbered lath-and-plaster walls and more recently added panelled rooms.
There was serious fire damage in 1995, so the task of the restoration architect, Donald Insall Associates, has not been just archaeological. It has had to replace a lot. The carved cage newel staircase makes the point. Half of it is dark original woodwork, and half new and deliberately unstained wood. The house now plays on the idea of genuine versus replica.
A generation ago, museums felt obliged to differentiate between 'simulated experience' and 'the real thing'. At Jorvik in York you went through a fibreglass dream world, with bottled smells, before getting to see, in a separate room, objects clinically displayed in glass cases.
Perhaps we are more sophisticated now. In Staircase House, it is not only the staircase but also the other woodwork and the furniture that mixes old and new. Some bridges and ramps are made of glass and steel. The mixture works and will stimulate visitors in a way that a perfectly finished replica would not.
The publicity rather misleadingly says it is a museum without labels. Actually, it is more or less a museum without objects (though there are some in a glass case at the end). But in any case, it is not so much a museum as a historic house; not a stately home, but a vernacular house, and all the more interesting for that.
So, after an introductory exhibition room, visitors are let loose with an audioguide (or, for those with hearing problems, a computerised sign-language guide). This is common practice in historic houses.
The audioguide provides facts about decoration and furniture and snatches of drama about the Shallcross family (who lived here once) and town history. Visitors see a storehouse, stables, wine cellar, kitchen, 17th-century parlour, bedroom, 18th-century dining room, Regency parlour, and - as a joke - a 1940s bedroom.
A major feature is an exposed wall overlooking the courtyard, where timber, brick and masonry construction over several centuries can be 'read'. Sensitised by this, visitors will pick out other oddities that have been allowed to survive, such as a Victorian gas-bracket in a parlour otherwise restored to a 17th century state.
Other rooms along the way will be used for activities: visitors can interactively learn about food storage and preparation, making rush lights, writing with quill pens, investigating how a straw bed is made up, or trying their hand at wattle and daub construction.
To say (as the publicity claims) that 'the concept of interactive museums is being challenged' by the Staircase House is putting it too strongly. But it's a high-quality restoration, and the way the building has been adapted for a variety of interpretation strategies is promising.
Because it is a warren of passages and higgledy-piggledy little rooms, Staircase House offers visitors a really involving, exploratory physical experience that cannot fail to appeal (though it may be hard to get coach parties around). The added educational experience, of hand as well as eye, will enhance it.
Anthony Burton is the author of Vision and Accident and the chairman of the trustees of the Charles Dickens Museum, London
Project data
Building cost: £3.1m
Funders: Stockport Metropolitan Borough Council, Heritage Lottery Fund, English Heritage, and the Northwest Development Agency
Architect: Donald Insall Associates
Principal contractor: Linford-Bridgeman
Stockport, just south of Manchester, was established market town by the middle ages but it made its mark in English history chiefly as a symbol of the horrors of the industrial revolution.
An often reproduced view features a huge railway viaduct striding over a narrow valley stacked with satanic mills, which belch smoke and spew poison into a turgid river. Nowadays Stockport has cleaned itself up. The railway viaduct crosses an urban motorway and acres of supermarkets. Stockport also has an interesting portfolio of heritage sites.
First, in 1860, came a neat Italianate museum building, perched above a terraced municipal park. In the Victorian way, fresh air could be absorbed along with natural history, geology, local antiquities, and a collection of what were claimed to be Old Masters bought by a local Mr Smith on holiday in Rome in 1861.
Next came the Stockport Art Gallery and War Memorial in the 1920s. On the Cheshire side of town, there is a half-timbered Tudor manor house, Bramall Hall; and, on the Pennine side, the local council for some time administered for the National Trust a stone mansion on the moors called Lyme Park.
Recently, the portfolio has grown to include a country chapel, a hat museum in a closed hat factory, and a network of air-raid shelters tunnelled into the riverbank. Heritage volunteers maintain an art deco cinema.
Volunteers fought from the 1980s to save Staircase House, now restored by the council with help from the Heritage Lottery Fund, English Heritage, and the Northwest Development Agency. The house, named after its rare Jacobean staircase, stands in the hilltop marketplace, an enclave of mostly Victorian buildings.
On one side of the square, overlooking the iron and glass market hall (1862), there is the tourist office and premises in which local history collections will soon be redisplayed as The Stockport Story.
Unexpectedly, this row of buildings includes, behind a modern facade, one that has grown over several centuries. You enter Staircase House through the modern glittery shop, and are surprised to find yourself in an inner court, surrounded by medieval cellars that support a cruck-frame building with half-timbered lath-and-plaster walls and more recently added panelled rooms.
There was serious fire damage in 1995, so the task of the restoration architect, Donald Insall Associates, has not been just archaeological. It has had to replace a lot. The carved cage newel staircase makes the point. Half of it is dark original woodwork, and half new and deliberately unstained wood. The house now plays on the idea of genuine versus replica.
A generation ago, museums felt obliged to differentiate between 'simulated experience' and 'the real thing'. At Jorvik in York you went through a fibreglass dream world, with bottled smells, before getting to see, in a separate room, objects clinically displayed in glass cases.
Perhaps we are more sophisticated now. In Staircase House, it is not only the staircase but also the other woodwork and the furniture that mixes old and new. Some bridges and ramps are made of glass and steel. The mixture works and will stimulate visitors in a way that a perfectly finished replica would not.
The publicity rather misleadingly says it is a museum without labels. Actually, it is more or less a museum without objects (though there are some in a glass case at the end). But in any case, it is not so much a museum as a historic house; not a stately home, but a vernacular house, and all the more interesting for that.
So, after an introductory exhibition room, visitors are let loose with an audioguide (or, for those with hearing problems, a computerised sign-language guide). This is common practice in historic houses.
The audioguide provides facts about decoration and furniture and snatches of drama about the Shallcross family (who lived here once) and town history. Visitors see a storehouse, stables, wine cellar, kitchen, 17th-century parlour, bedroom, 18th-century dining room, Regency parlour, and - as a joke - a 1940s bedroom.
A major feature is an exposed wall overlooking the courtyard, where timber, brick and masonry construction over several centuries can be 'read'. Sensitised by this, visitors will pick out other oddities that have been allowed to survive, such as a Victorian gas-bracket in a parlour otherwise restored to a 17th century state.
Other rooms along the way will be used for activities: visitors can interactively learn about food storage and preparation, making rush lights, writing with quill pens, investigating how a straw bed is made up, or trying their hand at wattle and daub construction.
To say (as the publicity claims) that 'the concept of interactive museums is being challenged' by the Staircase House is putting it too strongly. But it's a high-quality restoration, and the way the building has been adapted for a variety of interpretation strategies is promising.
Because it is a warren of passages and higgledy-piggledy little rooms, Staircase House offers visitors a really involving, exploratory physical experience that cannot fail to appeal (though it may be hard to get coach parties around). The added educational experience, of hand as well as eye, will enhance it.
Anthony Burton is the author of Vision and Accident and the chairman of the trustees of the Charles Dickens Museum, London
Project data
Building cost: £3.1m
Funders: Stockport Metropolitan Borough Council, Heritage Lottery Fund, English Heritage, and the Northwest Development Agency
Architect: Donald Insall Associates
Principal contractor: Linford-Bridgeman
