It’s now 16 years since Winterbourne House first opened to the public as a heritage site in May 2010. In the early days, you could only visit the ground floor, and the rest of the building was used as a conference centre. As the site grew in popularity and interest in Winterbourne’s rich history grew, visitors wanted to see more than just the ground floor.  So in 2015, rooms on the first floor of the Nettlefold’s Edwardian family home were opened, and since then, we have also converted spaces on the second floor into an inspiring community exhibition space for all to enjoy…

A heritage site that feels like a home

 In essence, Winterbourne is a home, and we hope that when our visitors explore the rooms, they feel that the Nettlefold family are still in residence and have just popped out! To enhance that feeling, you may have noticed that we’ve made some subtle changes over the last few years. At the entrance and in the drawing room, there are museum panels which offer an introduction to Winterbourne’s vivid history and the life of the Nettlefold family. But beyond that, we choose to let the fascinating items from our collections do the talking.

Throughout the house, many large ‘museum’ panels have been removed from most rooms and replaced by small framed ‘stories’ which slot in amongst the furniture and objects on display. 

There are many advantages to presenting the story in this way.  It’s low-cost and adaptable. We can add to it or change it whenever we like. As our team of Collections and Archive Volunteers discover and catalogue new information about Winterbourne’s history, we’re able to weave these stories into displays. Above all, it’s unobtrusive and makes the house feel less like a museum and more like the family home that it once was.

Upcoming changes to look out for

This summer, we will be bringing these changes into John’s study. This cosy room on the ground floor still has large museum panels, which we know can be difficult to read, particularly for visitors with visual impairments. As you visit Winterbourne over the coming months, you will see those panels gradually come down, as we introduce new ways to tell the story of John’s life and achievements. We’ll also be able to use the wall space to display more works of art from the Arts and Crafts period, bringing even more warmth into it.

We still have museum panels in there, some of which are quite difficult to read, particularly for people with visual impairment. Gradually, those panels will come down, and we will look again at the stories we tell about John’s life and achievements. We’ll also be able to use the wall space to display more works of art from the period. 

Keep a look out for these changes the next time you visit us!

Henrietta Lockhart
Curator