1 00:00:00,340 --> 00:00:04,400 I've never been described as ecumenical before. Thank you, Ali. 2 00:00:04,400 --> 00:00:11,580 So I know this has been a tumultuous years, but many people have mentioned that I'm sorry I missed Friday. 3 00:00:11,580 --> 00:00:15,900 As you know, I've been quite tied up, probably tied up with other things in the National Trust. 4 00:00:15,900 --> 00:00:20,830 And somebody speaking today might put my hat on as a cultural historian, 5 00:00:20,830 --> 00:00:29,580 art historian and curator and heritage practitioner and someone who has learnt firsthand very much the hard way recently. 6 00:00:29,580 --> 00:00:36,360 How emotionally fraught political charr politically charged the space in which heritage presently sits is. 7 00:00:36,360 --> 00:00:41,610 So that's something I'm really kind of in the back of my mind as I as I speak about this. 8 00:00:41,610 --> 00:00:48,840 So I decided that trying to talk about the entire national trust in 20 minutes was a little bit too overambitious. 9 00:00:48,840 --> 00:01:00,360 And this is some work that I was thinking about before COGAT hit, really wanting to put together a Birkins project around spare's magic, 10 00:01:00,360 --> 00:01:06,030 supernatural folklore and the National Trust property for a very curatorial perspective, 11 00:01:06,030 --> 00:01:12,300 but really thinking about how I can approach that with my colleagues and with partners. 12 00:01:12,300 --> 00:01:20,190 So really happy to discuss ideas of people either at the end of this or out of this forum. 13 00:01:20,190 --> 00:01:24,750 So what I'm going to look at today, I'm going to focus on one of our places, one of our properties, 14 00:01:24,750 --> 00:01:30,830 which is Snowsill Manor, which has many of you may know, which is near Broadway in the North Cotswolds. 15 00:01:30,830 --> 00:01:34,390 And it's a private collection of unique individual and collector. 16 00:01:34,390 --> 00:01:40,620 For me, it raises many questions about how we connect to the unseen and the forgotten and the intangible in our places. 17 00:01:40,620 --> 00:01:45,840 And there's just a variety of objects which I'll talk about a bit more on this screen. 18 00:01:45,840 --> 00:01:52,050 So really, this presentation today is an opening exploration and really set of very open questions 19 00:01:52,050 --> 00:01:56,910 around how at the trust we or I might approach the spaces in between the hidden, 20 00:01:56,910 --> 00:02:01,350 the occluded, the ineffable, the intangible and the forgotten. 21 00:02:01,350 --> 00:02:07,530 How we use those ideas, narratives and experiences to unlock the objects, collection spaces, buildings, gardens, 22 00:02:07,530 --> 00:02:15,630 parklands and landscapes we care for and create new ways and connexions between individuals and communities and the 23 00:02:15,630 --> 00:02:24,000 way they're able to connect with these places and and collections and landscapes in ways that go beyond the visual. 24 00:02:24,000 --> 00:02:26,880 And which is something we've really relied long on along. 25 00:02:26,880 --> 00:02:36,120 So we relied on a lot in the past and beyond what some what some heritage theorists have called the authorised heritage experience. 26 00:02:36,120 --> 00:02:42,810 So today I'm taking on my very unauthorised curators heritage tour of Snow's Hill Manor. 27 00:02:42,810 --> 00:02:50,550 For me, it's a site where magic was deliberately excluded by the National Trust when it took it on in the 1950s. 28 00:02:50,550 --> 00:02:58,500 The collections that were regarded as most problematic and magical were were handed over on indefinite loan to Cecil Williamson. 29 00:02:58,500 --> 00:03:05,550 The Witchcraft Museum in the 1960s. And that really was a deliberate attempt to negate those narratives. 30 00:03:05,550 --> 00:03:09,770 And then the witches garrets, which is quite famous and hardly anyone sees it. 31 00:03:09,770 --> 00:03:14,160 So I'm going to show you today remains hidden from visitors today. 32 00:03:14,160 --> 00:03:19,380 And that's partly because it's not very accessible. But also it hasn't been part of the mainstream narratives. 33 00:03:19,380 --> 00:03:27,340 The trust of wisht present in the past. And now as head curator, that's something I really do want to address. 34 00:03:27,340 --> 00:03:32,110 So this is Snow's health. This is a pic I took about exactly a year ago, actually on a visit. 35 00:03:32,110 --> 00:03:36,820 And I do apologise some of these my my own pictures and professional ones. 36 00:03:36,820 --> 00:03:41,200 So Snow's Hellman is a 16th century Cotswold manor house, very traditional, 37 00:03:41,200 --> 00:03:48,490 purchased by architect, artist and designer Charles Padget Wade, whose dates are 1883 to 1956. 38 00:03:48,490 --> 00:03:52,780 He bought in 1919 when he returned from the First World War. 39 00:03:52,780 --> 00:03:59,860 And he donated it to the National Trust in 1951 when he moved permanently to St. Kitts for health reasons. 40 00:03:59,860 --> 00:04:01,870 Today, the experience, if you visit the trust, 41 00:04:01,870 --> 00:04:11,900 is largely ticketed because it's only small and narrow and there's lots of objects and largely self guided as well. 42 00:04:11,900 --> 00:04:19,880 So this is a picture of Wade in 1932, actually on St. Kitts at the Children's Tea Party at his is one of his estates. 43 00:04:19,880 --> 00:04:27,770 So Wade inherited his father's ContiTech considerable stake in the family's sugar plantations in St. Kitts in 1911. 44 00:04:27,770 --> 00:04:30,920 And that meant he could give up his career as an architect. 45 00:04:30,920 --> 00:04:39,200 The plantations you'd be unsuppressed know, originally worked by enslaved Africans and the weight family received compensation in the 18th thirties. 46 00:04:39,200 --> 00:04:44,090 Wade himself was bi racial as his grandmother was a free woman of colour from St. Kitts. 47 00:04:44,090 --> 00:04:51,320 There's quite a complex and involved story. I won't go into too much today for obvious reasons. 48 00:04:51,320 --> 00:04:54,530 So these are some amazing pictures of Wade. 49 00:04:54,530 --> 00:05:03,470 He was a conscripts conscripted into the First World War and was very traumatised by the horrors he saw, obviously, although he wasn't active service. 50 00:05:03,470 --> 00:05:07,560 He was mostly an artist and recording what he saw. 51 00:05:07,560 --> 00:05:15,290 And whilst he was still in France, he saw that Snow's Hill Manor was up for sale and bought it, despite it being in a very poor state. 52 00:05:15,290 --> 00:05:23,370 He went to a place to escape the horror and to live out his artistic fantasies and to seek to gain control of life again in a very performative space. 53 00:05:23,370 --> 00:05:29,090 And it was a very performative space where he was the main architect, so to speak, 54 00:05:29,090 --> 00:05:34,190 and the garden just came back, which you can just see a little bit of there in that image I took. 55 00:05:34,190 --> 00:05:40,790 That was some he co designed with the very famous leading arts and crafts architect and designer, Hugh. 56 00:05:40,790 --> 00:05:47,420 So make McKay, Hugh Bailey Scott. And he really saw the garden as an extension of the house. 57 00:05:47,420 --> 00:05:55,440 So I weighed a mass here, a huge, eclectic collections. 58 00:05:55,440 --> 00:06:00,500 I should just go back here. And one of those is the most important dress collections in the country. 59 00:06:00,500 --> 00:06:09,020 And it's something we still haven't properly explored in terms of some of the outstanding amount of historic dress there. 60 00:06:09,020 --> 00:06:14,330 It's incredible. But he wasn't collecting as a dress collector as part of his fantasy world of dressing up. 61 00:06:14,330 --> 00:06:20,350 Of surprising he's to invite people round for fancy dress parties and really for. 62 00:06:20,350 --> 00:06:24,740 And you can see some of him dressed up in some of his many, many guises here. 63 00:06:24,740 --> 00:06:28,640 But there are some extremely important objects in that. 64 00:06:28,640 --> 00:06:34,610 He was also a collector, lots of objects, some of which he'd inherited and some which he purchased suspiciously. 65 00:06:34,610 --> 00:06:40,350 So especially after the 1938 when he'd made an agreement with a national trust to take the House, 66 00:06:40,350 --> 00:06:47,330 he was went mad collecting excuse me, excuse a term he had just really collected and doubled the size of the collection. 67 00:06:47,330 --> 00:06:54,350 So he was very much fascinated by objects made by skilled crafts people, and he did create objects and art himself. 68 00:06:54,350 --> 00:07:04,270 Actually, that picture on the left hand corner in the grey hats when he painted himself and he really set out to create a series of spaces. 69 00:07:04,270 --> 00:07:10,960 So the main manor house here didn't actually live in. He lived in the priest's house next to it. 70 00:07:10,960 --> 00:07:19,130 It was a really good set of spaces where both interior exterior could be a delivery stage backdrops for his collection. 71 00:07:19,130 --> 00:07:25,610 And for him to inhabit. And he used to use the sort of fabric of the manor to great effect. 72 00:07:25,610 --> 00:07:33,140 There were secret passages and entrances and the places it was supposed to be or is supposed to be haunted. 73 00:07:33,140 --> 00:07:38,450 And so he would take great joy in dressing up in historic historical dress, 74 00:07:38,450 --> 00:07:47,690 sneaking through a passageway and then surprising people probably terrifying them out of their minds as he would appear from as if from nowhere. 75 00:07:47,690 --> 00:07:55,480 So there's something about using their uncanny and very much performing in that space. 76 00:07:55,480 --> 00:08:06,060 And so these are some objects he actually made himself. These are the alchemist knishes from 1922 and which really. 77 00:08:06,060 --> 00:08:12,450 Very much so. Sum up his very theatrical and also sort of magical approach. 78 00:08:12,450 --> 00:08:18,810 So what I sort of I'm positing here really is that part of that immersive experience that he offered was 79 00:08:18,810 --> 00:08:27,840 sort of deliberate staging of a house as a series of romanticised occult or magical spaces and objects. 80 00:08:27,840 --> 00:08:34,590 And just to show you a few things here. So this is the witches garret, which most people have never seen. 81 00:08:34,590 --> 00:08:36,570 It's very inaccessible on the pitch. 82 00:08:36,570 --> 00:08:42,830 On the right, you can just see my colleague, his head of interpretation at the trust, disappearing through quite a small hole. 83 00:08:42,830 --> 00:08:51,300 And in it there's a magic circle. And then you can just see the back and I'll show some more close up pictures, some art he created. 84 00:08:51,300 --> 00:08:57,720 And I haven't yet located the Atlas or or Hercules holding the ordinary sphere. 85 00:08:57,720 --> 00:09:06,300 I haven't located the manuscript that comes from. But the Mandrax, which I'll show you close up in a moment. 86 00:09:06,300 --> 00:09:12,900 They are based on, I believe, on the mediaeval herbal. The got dickason tight from fourteen eighty five. 87 00:09:12,900 --> 00:09:19,050 And the Magic Circle as well was based on a very specific manuscript also from the 15th century. 88 00:09:19,050 --> 00:09:25,710 So this is an old picture. This is the only picture you can see online on the left of the which is garrets. 89 00:09:25,710 --> 00:09:32,520 This is on the left again, image not available online. The design for the witch's circle. 90 00:09:32,520 --> 00:09:39,120 And yes, it tells you the manuscript. It came from apparently an 18th century manuscript, actually. 91 00:09:39,120 --> 00:09:43,380 And then on the right, you can just see the picture. It's not very easy to take pictures and it's very dark. 92 00:09:43,380 --> 00:09:50,460 The entire house said this is a picture I took of that magic circle, which is still sort of intact. 93 00:09:50,460 --> 00:09:54,450 And I just think it's a really interesting proposition. Who knows? 94 00:09:54,450 --> 00:10:01,290 I do not know. He is a magical practitioner. I found. No. There's no evidence of that. 95 00:10:01,290 --> 00:10:06,660 Obviously, that's trying to find evidence of these things. But certainly he wasn't. 96 00:10:06,660 --> 00:10:12,690 As far as we know, a member of any of the sort of magical groups where we know who many of the members were. 97 00:10:12,690 --> 00:10:19,020 But that doesn't mean he wasn't perhaps a practitioner. But so and I think it really matters, to be honest to me. 98 00:10:19,020 --> 00:10:25,640 It's really thinking about these spaces as a very performative, magical or romanticised, magical space. 99 00:10:25,640 --> 00:10:30,450 And it's clear that he was very attuned to a lot of manuscripts and use these 100 00:10:30,450 --> 00:10:35,040 as his his source material is going to run through a few more objects here. 101 00:10:35,040 --> 00:10:42,930 So this is a close up excuse. The wrapped objects in tissue paper, the bottom when these are taken, the house was completely closed. 102 00:10:42,930 --> 00:10:46,320 And, you know, my experience of this house is very different from most people's because I 103 00:10:46,320 --> 00:10:50,670 was basically given a key and allowed to run around and do whatever I wanted. 104 00:10:50,670 --> 00:10:56,970 So it's less orchestrated and far freer than many people's experiences. 105 00:10:56,970 --> 00:11:03,060 And so you can see the at the Atlas or Hercules figure and then the two Mandrake 106 00:11:03,060 --> 00:11:07,590 figures that come from that 15th century manuscript I was sort of speaking about. 107 00:11:07,590 --> 00:11:14,780 So it was definitely very stage space here. And this is the what's known as the unicorn clock, 108 00:11:14,780 --> 00:11:24,350 and you can just see in the right hand corner at the bottom the table of scale and there's a tarot card, images based on the Marseilles tarot. 109 00:11:24,350 --> 00:11:32,080 And I'm just I just. And these are still on the wall and not great condition. 110 00:11:32,080 --> 00:11:40,600 It's very damp house and this is sort of applied paper. But we do also have the designs for these as well. 111 00:11:40,600 --> 00:11:52,070 And there's a three at the design. So he drew them himself very much based on that Marseilles deck. 112 00:11:52,070 --> 00:11:56,250 And just a few other objects. I mean, he's extremely eclectic collector. 113 00:11:56,250 --> 00:12:04,440 But there does seem to be a focus on objects that have a sort of magical or ineffable bent on the left is a a witch's bottle, 114 00:12:04,440 --> 00:12:11,190 whether that's a sort of, I suppose, a heritage we created, which is Warhol or a a genuine one. 115 00:12:11,190 --> 00:12:14,280 I'm not sure it's one of the ones that has silks, very fine silk threads, 116 00:12:14,280 --> 00:12:19,460 which are supposed to tangle up the which he is trying to attack your property. 117 00:12:19,460 --> 00:12:24,330 And on the right, that's a relic quiffs and Ignatius. 118 00:12:24,330 --> 00:12:29,210 So is a wide selection of objects from all over the world as well. 119 00:12:29,210 --> 00:12:37,470 And I'll come to that at the end, actually, in how we think about, I suppose, magical or supposedly magical objects from other cultures. 120 00:12:37,470 --> 00:12:41,490 That's something I still want to explore. I think it's quite interesting. 121 00:12:41,490 --> 00:12:45,300 And then the objects in the collection become quite disconnected from their original 122 00:12:45,300 --> 00:12:52,340 contexts and meanings and the reconfigures in entirely different sort of magical space here. 123 00:12:52,340 --> 00:12:59,160 And this sort of cant continue to the outside. We've got the icons so I can't pronounce it. 124 00:12:59,160 --> 00:13:05,250 Cimarron Zodiac Clock, which the metalworks by George Hart, who's from the Guild of Handicraft. 125 00:13:05,250 --> 00:13:09,930 So who's very interested in astrological and astronomical time, I think, rather than linear time. 126 00:13:09,930 --> 00:13:18,850 I'm going to talk about that in a moment. And an artillery spiffier sundial that he has outside, which I think has to have been taken inside. 127 00:13:18,850 --> 00:13:27,160 Now. And again, a great interest in these are military spheres and these that's not left the picture I snapped when I was there. 128 00:13:27,160 --> 00:13:32,380 And that's another another image on the right is also in the collection. 129 00:13:32,380 --> 00:13:35,960 So I think it's interesting. 130 00:13:35,960 --> 00:13:43,770 Sort of weighed. It sort of transforms himself rather than this eccentric architect was his position now. 131 00:13:43,770 --> 00:13:51,750 He was heir to a sugar fortune. He sort of gives us a sense of metamorphosis into this costume source who are conducting the playful rites of 132 00:13:51,750 --> 00:13:59,280 transformation in a series of spaces where friends as well could escape the every day and stand outside of time again. 133 00:13:59,280 --> 00:14:04,650 As mentioned earlier, that sort of rejection of modernity and the sort of linear passage of time. 134 00:14:04,650 --> 00:14:15,630 And I think there's he he he has so many objects that relate to sort of cyclical time or astrological or astronomical time, 135 00:14:15,630 --> 00:14:22,920 not interested in that sort of linear, linear time of modernity. And has an interest. 136 00:14:22,920 --> 00:14:30,680 Really nice anecdote about John Buchan, the author driving Virginia Woolf, as you do to visit Snow's Hill, 137 00:14:30,680 --> 00:14:37,810 not Schwartz in the 20s or 30s, because he saw it as the most extraordinary place he knew, Wolf. 138 00:14:37,810 --> 00:14:44,930 And she was extremely cross when she missed her train home because despite there being hundreds of timepieces in the house, 139 00:14:44,930 --> 00:14:53,620 waited, not sat a single one to the correct time. And he was clearly far more interested in this sort of way to notions of time. 140 00:14:53,620 --> 00:15:03,330 So waits, collecting, creating and commissioning evocative magical objects feels like a way of standing outside of the relentless drive of modernity. 141 00:15:03,330 --> 00:15:09,300 And I think very much that's that sort of driver. Modernity was a pity most by the war he saw and survived. 142 00:15:09,300 --> 00:15:12,180 And I think it's quite interesting as House of Citzen, 143 00:15:12,180 --> 00:15:20,070 a similar but different space from the many architects and designers in the late 19th and early 20th century who sought to create arts and crafts, 144 00:15:20,070 --> 00:15:23,520 utopias and ways. One was very different. 145 00:15:23,520 --> 00:15:28,380 It was less idealistic and more one of playfulness than fantasy. 146 00:15:28,380 --> 00:15:33,360 So what doesn't doesn't work is those hurlers, as it sort of sits at the moment. 147 00:15:33,360 --> 00:15:39,300 In many ways, it's a very charming experience. But I'm very aware that having been given the key to the door when it was closed, 148 00:15:39,300 --> 00:15:48,410 the public and allowed to sort of run around essentially obscene, a very careful curatorial and concerted conservative way. 149 00:15:48,410 --> 00:15:51,390 And I got to experience the amazing which has Garret and go up there. 150 00:15:51,390 --> 00:15:57,770 I know I've had a very different experience, mother visitors that present the house very much, I think, as as. 151 00:15:57,770 --> 00:16:02,940 It relies on the mass display of objects and very dim lighting to make it otherworldly. 152 00:16:02,940 --> 00:16:10,650 And you can see this is not in the main manner. This image here is the bedroom and Wade's own bedroom, which is in the separate priest's house. 153 00:16:10,650 --> 00:16:16,470 So basically the supposed to the house itself was a site of these sort of magical rooms. 154 00:16:16,470 --> 00:16:27,510 But also he carried that on into his living space in the priest's house and later on with his wife, Mary, and from the 1930s. 155 00:16:27,510 --> 00:16:39,320 But even for me, with my privileged experience and knowledge and understanding of some of the collections without the magician animating those spaces. 156 00:16:39,320 --> 00:16:45,780 The rooms and objects feel they sit there rather silently, like dusty spectres. 157 00:16:45,780 --> 00:16:52,890 So what I'm interested in exploring this is partly sort of academic and also partly just thinking about this to experience. 158 00:16:52,890 --> 00:17:00,230 How can visitors have a truly embodied, playful and multisensory and magical experience that brings out those hidden stories? 159 00:17:00,230 --> 00:17:00,600 And, you know, 160 00:17:00,600 --> 00:17:08,370 this is something think about applying across the trust that allows the glimpse of the hidden corridors behind the walls and the witch's garret. 161 00:17:08,370 --> 00:17:16,350 How can this be incorporated into sort of the multiple layered narratives that we want to present at our places? 162 00:17:16,350 --> 00:17:25,410 How can we connect the houses, the house and gardens to that have always focussed on Wade's history? 163 00:17:25,410 --> 00:17:29,370 Can we connect those to the wider histories of the property? 164 00:17:29,370 --> 00:17:39,760 As so many other stories around this house are just kind of get negated almost by the sort of dominant narrative of moving on? 165 00:17:39,760 --> 00:17:50,570 Lets me. And the room in the right, which is known as Anna's room, all all the rooms are named by Reweight himself, is said to be haunted. 166 00:17:50,570 --> 00:17:55,580 Unsurprisingly, the room is named for a 16 year old young woman, Could and Palmer, 167 00:17:55,580 --> 00:18:02,560 who June 16, 04, eloped to the manor, which was a house of a friend with her lover, Anthony. 168 00:18:02,560 --> 00:18:07,880 And where they were quickly married by local vicar secret lovers who unfortunately caught because 169 00:18:07,880 --> 00:18:13,850 she was already promised to another by Anne's guardian and apparently tried by the Star Chamber. 170 00:18:13,850 --> 00:18:21,770 And we don't know what the outcome of that trial was. But that story itself has become part of the wage magical mythos of the property. 171 00:18:21,770 --> 00:18:29,240 Apparently, he took a little scraping off the wood beam and sent it to renowned medium on the south coast who weighed claims. 172 00:18:29,240 --> 00:18:35,870 Never heard of Snowsill, but on examining the timber, she described it as late at night. 173 00:18:35,870 --> 00:18:41,150 In it, a girl in a green dress of the 17th century, much agitated pieces up and down. 174 00:18:41,150 --> 00:18:43,810 She does not live there and will not stay the night. 175 00:18:43,810 --> 00:18:51,590 And then Wade claims it was some years later he saw papers describing the Star Chamber case relating to Seep Krip marriage of Anne Parsons. 176 00:18:51,590 --> 00:18:56,570 So we know how much that's him creating this mythos and how much it could be actual event. 177 00:18:56,570 --> 00:18:59,720 Who knows? Is a great yarn. 178 00:18:59,720 --> 00:19:05,540 But there are other ghosts in the house, apparently, such as a Zenith room on the left, which is the site of a bloody jewel. 179 00:19:05,540 --> 00:19:12,230 There's a Benedictine monk from the time when Snow's Hill was part of which come at Abbey and that of Charles Marshall, 180 00:19:12,230 --> 00:19:18,830 who lived at the manor in the first half of the 19th century and whose ghost apparently led his widow to a buried fortunes, 181 00:19:18,830 --> 00:19:27,070 allowed her to update the house. So these those ghost, hence the overlooked nature of the man, as longer history of as part of the unique cults, 182 00:19:27,070 --> 00:19:31,180 what Cotswolds cultural landscape is time as part of the lands of the church, 183 00:19:31,180 --> 00:19:38,140 its previous residents and workers, and its connexion to the myths and stories of the place is rooted in these connexions be 184 00:19:38,140 --> 00:19:43,630 recovered just as we're recovering the secrets of the spaces and collections in the house. 185 00:19:43,630 --> 00:19:50,200 And at the moment, the National Trust is we've been finalising significant frameworks practically around buildings and collections. 186 00:19:50,200 --> 00:19:57,640 So how do we think about significance in farm in a broader sense than the material which has often been done in the past, 187 00:19:57,640 --> 00:20:03,850 or the sort of fame or the cost of objects? We still need to approach landscapes such and those frameworks. 188 00:20:03,850 --> 00:20:09,560 So folklore, spiritual and community experience is part of those new frameworks that we're looking at. 189 00:20:09,560 --> 00:20:13,450 But how do we think of the significance of the spaces in between the places that are less 190 00:20:13,450 --> 00:20:20,470 tangible and of those stories and or traditions and hidden and transient meanings and events? 191 00:20:20,470 --> 00:20:25,700 Most are interested in how can spaces like this really sort of ramp up the effects? 192 00:20:25,700 --> 00:20:34,050 And embodied experience. How do we think about presence? In many ways, you know, Wade is the great presence in this house at the moment. 193 00:20:34,050 --> 00:20:36,240 But he's an absence as well. 194 00:20:36,240 --> 00:20:44,850 Can this be done through sort of more experientially multisensory approaches rather than sort predicated on the visual, which is at the moment? 195 00:20:44,850 --> 00:20:51,060 And one thing I'm particularly interested in here is how do you approach presenting the uncanny and spiritual heritage, 196 00:20:51,060 --> 00:20:53,880 particularly objects with global histories? 197 00:20:53,880 --> 00:21:03,050 And this is a Balinese mask, again, relating to stories around witchcraft and which are worn in traditional barong dances, 198 00:21:03,050 --> 00:21:07,240 is still performed in Bali and depict the battle between good and evil. 199 00:21:07,240 --> 00:21:14,970 And there's lots and lots of masks and tickly barley's masks for objects from all over the world in this collection. 200 00:21:14,970 --> 00:21:23,640 This is a a Siamese with what's called a Siamese magician's hat in in currently and are very poorly written record. 201 00:21:23,640 --> 00:21:27,270 And I've been speaking to friend only this morning who used to live in Thailand. 202 00:21:27,270 --> 00:21:35,790 And we've sort of because that whole aspect of Thai magic sort of before it became incorporated with Buddhism is is almost forgotten. 203 00:21:35,790 --> 00:21:38,610 We were just wondering what sources we could possibly look to. 204 00:21:38,610 --> 00:21:47,130 And if you see on the bottom of the underneath room, there's sacred geometry, which is very much like the succulent, 205 00:21:47,130 --> 00:21:56,410 magical tattering if people are familiar of that, which is still practised today by Buddhist monks. 206 00:21:56,410 --> 00:21:58,990 And for me, the moment there is a real failure here, 207 00:21:58,990 --> 00:22:07,510 particularly in this room with incredible collection of Japanese samurai armour and the way it's presented, 208 00:22:07,510 --> 00:22:13,620 which I believe is probably similar to the way that Wade presented it, 209 00:22:13,620 --> 00:22:19,990 in that the sort of dim lighting that she used her out the house and this kind of uncanny and spooky presentation. 210 00:22:19,990 --> 00:22:26,450 Effectively, Oriental's is in others. This presentation of this and really, you know, 211 00:22:26,450 --> 00:22:31,640 it doesn't give those objects themselves justice is something that we're particularly looking at at the moment. 212 00:22:31,640 --> 00:22:38,710 And for me, this is a real, real failure here that we have to be sensitive to to objects. 213 00:22:38,710 --> 00:22:46,330 But where these are, you know, these are cultural objects of warfare and and a particular group of people in Japan, 214 00:22:46,330 --> 00:22:53,350 they are not spooky objects, but they're presented as such. And it's very deep, certainly problematic. 215 00:22:53,350 --> 00:22:59,110 And to come full circle, really, from talking about the sort of origins of where the wealth are paid for this house, 216 00:22:59,110 --> 00:23:09,990 how do we present the ghosts of Padget ways, enslaved ancestors and of the people his English family enslaved in St. Kitts? 217 00:23:09,990 --> 00:23:11,673 Thank you.