INTRODUCTION

This post is the first of the detailed Heritage Open Day 2017 posts following on from the series opener. I visited the building that this post is dedicated to twice – first to familiarise myself with it, and then to spend two hours stewarding there. 

THE STEWARDING EXPERIENCE

As I mentioned in the overview piece as I was stewarding alongside councillor Lesley Bambridge. All we knew when we started was that there were no visitor forms left for people to fill in, and that the basic rule was that if a door was open the room was accessible, otherwise not. Additionally, although it was possible to climb the staircase from ground to first floor there were no open doors on that floor, and above the first floor were private flats. We were three-quarters of the way through our stint when we discovered that we were supposed to be keeping count of visitors. From the moment we started keeping count we recorded 61 people coming in, which multiplied by four gives 244 people, which I rounded down on our tally sheet to approximately 240. Multiplied by three for the whole day this gives about 720 people coming in, and this was one of the more minor attractions.

That number of visitors also serves to explain why those two hours took quite a lot out of me – that scale of personal interaction is no joke for an autistic person.

I have put myself down to volunteer again next year, and look forward to doing it again.

27 KING STREET IN PHOTOGRAPHS

I took some photographs on my preliminary visit and had occasional opportunities while stewarding as well.