Mid Winter

It’s that time of year again, the end of November, turning into December. As I write, it is less than a month from the winter solstice. Everything becomes greyer, the dark shadows expand, and corners of rooms disappears. The leaves are at the end of their tether, with great mashes of mulch on the roads and pavements. We start thinking about winter, hot drinks fires and the indoors. This has always been one of my favourite times of year.

Things go quiet in the heritage world. It is a moment of peace; the lull before the storm that is Christmas. Visitor figures drop during the daytime, with people favouring the ice rinks and evening tours, ending with a sip of spiced wine and pies.

The weekends are taken up with shopping, meeting people, parties, theatre and the weekdays are crammed with work to get the time off over the Christmas period. The schools have their Christmas plays, fairs, pantos, parties, card making, and a whole host of other festive money-making activities. The education visits and workshops drop off. The build up to Christmas can be very quiet and the interiors of the historic venues are bereft of people. I have worked in many a historic house, palace, outdoor site, museum, and not seen a sole in the first few weeks of December. Hampton Court Palace, Ham House, the City of London’s Guildhall. They’ve all had this moment.

The rooms are grey, with an almost dry mist about them. There is no “office lighting”, just the low-level, yellow, lighting designed with lux-hours in mind, not to fade the pigments in paintings and tapestries. You get a sense of how they were two, three hundred years ago. The dark dry corners of the rooms start to draw you in, become alive with their darkness and demand your attention. I have often found myself looking into a dark corner for no reason, snapping out of a trance, and shaking myself back into consciousness.

As the evenings become earlier, the light diminishes outside, and the dark takes over the rooms. Interiors begin to disappear, the stairs ascend into darkness, and tall ceilings are barely made out. The tapestries meld into an amorphous background and paintings are only made out by their frames. I notice the insignificant things I hadn’t seen for almost a year, reconnecting with the dark places that nobody ever notices, or sees. The Victorian heating grills. The space behind the Chinese vases. The fireplace backs. Outside, the light makes the place feel monumental as the towering walls disappear out of sight above you and long ornamental, gardens disappear into the mist.

Churches are especially terrific for this. The dark fills the great spaces, playing tricks with your eyes. Cathedrals the same. Large enormous interiors designed to make you feel small take on a new appearance.

There is a silence that amplifies the sounds of the rooms. The silence is deafening… as the saying goes. The creaks, the drafts, the echoes down the corridors. The building sounds like it is moving, very slowly. It is the sounds you would not normally hear. I have often been disturbed by faint voices and laughter that appear to be coming from nowhere, only to discover it is from the audios in the floor below.

There is nothing in sight to detract from them, apart from the odd plane going over head. This is a time for ghosts, magic and stories. It is not Halloween; Halloween is a party on one night. No one is dressing up here and children would be utterly bored. This time, leading up to the solstice, is over a long, slow period, where shadows lurk. This is the moment before the hoards return after the Christmas binge, for the events, singing and dancing. It is the time when you can hear and re-imagine the rooms. Silence holds a lot of thoughts, memories and philosophy. I have never made notes my sightings and feelings of ghosts, having left them in my head as memories; but I wonder if it is within this time.

Inertia sets in, which gives me a quiet, comforting internalisation. When I used to work in such rooms and apartments, I got to the point where I didn’t want to talk to anyone. The odd visitor or room steward would pass by, and I would avoid them, heading off through other rooms seeking the seclusion. The solitude, the quiet and time to think; it takes my mind to people who were there three centuries ago. Rooms of power, influence and patronage would create success and achievement. They also created failure, stress and raw anxiety.  

This is the time when I visit historic buildings. It is not a snapshot of the past, or the moment to look for and capture ghosts. It is place in the present and be with yourself. For me, it is a luxury to have this time, personally and in my work. It creates an added depth and understanding of the surrounding archaeology and history. When I have this time and space, with the subject in hand, whatever the time of year, the outcomes of my work have a greater quality to them.

I worked in Hampton Court Palace over 20 years ago, Ham House 10 years ago, Billingsgate Roman House and Baths 5 years ago, and they all had this atmosphere at this time of the year. Even now, I go to my local church on a Wednesday evening (campanology), and it is there. As soon as I go into a historic venue in December, I feel it.