Sue Rhodes, visitor operations & experience manager at Petworth House, is adamant: the days of walking around the property in hushed reverence have long since gone. She and the team want the House to be filled with conversation and laughter. And that’s one of the things that makes Christmas at Petworth House so special. Visitors are so much more relaxed, Sue says.
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00:00Good afternoon, my name is Phil Hewitt, Group Arts Editor at Sussex Newspapers.
00:05Lovely to speak to Sue Rhodes, who is Visitor Operations and Visitor Experience Manager at Petworth House.
00:12Now, Petworth House is spectacular at Christmas and you are promising its most spectacular Christmas so far, aren't you?
00:19Why is Christmas so important and so special at Petworth, do you think?
00:24Christmas is really special to us because it gives us a chance to kind of just enhance the spectacular showrooms at Petworth.
00:31So we're so lucky the rooms at Petworth are really big and really grand because they were the rooms the family used to entertain and have guests in.
00:40So we use that as an opportunity to kind of entertain our visitors who are our guests.
00:44So we fill the house with Christmas displays, which enhances the interiors, enhances the artwork and just makes people maybe look at those rooms in a slightly different way.
00:53And it's an amazing change in the National Trust, isn't it?
00:56We were reminiscing about, it wasn't so very long ago, the National Trust properties shut for months and months.
01:01Then they started opening and now Christmas, December, is your busiest month.
01:07Yeah, absolutely.
01:09So I think we just kind of, you know, you just start to think, you know, we've done these things for years, but do you have to keep doing it that way?
01:15You know, actually, people want to come and see our houses in the winter, you know, especially when the weather's bad outside.
01:20It is an indoor, you know, place to come.
01:22And, you know, our house team, our collections team do an amazing job caring for the collection in the winter, doing the winter clean and the condition checking.
01:29But they can only work in one or two rooms at a time.
01:31So actually, while those other rooms aren't being used, we can open them and the visitors can enjoy them and we can create magical kind of Christmas experiences.
01:39So that's where it comes from.
01:40And yeah, December is now our busiest time of the year.
01:43It's overtaken summer because I think so many people want somewhere to go where they can meet friends and family.
01:48People travel from different parts of the country and come and meet here and, you know, see each other and kind of create those Christmas memories at Petworth, which is great.
01:56And it became your busiest month a few years ago when you changed your offering and settled on the offering that you've currently got.
02:03So what makes it so right, what you do these days at Petworth at Christmas?
02:09Yeah, so our last two or three Christmases have been really popular.
02:12So what we've done is we've kind of really realised there are some key things that people want.
02:15Yes, people want Christmas.
02:17They want to see beautifully decorated trees.
02:19They love the fact that a lot of our decorations are handcrafted by our staff and volunteers.
02:24That feels really special.
02:25And also the fact that Petworth is really well known for its collection.
02:29We have an incredible collection of paintings and sculpture and furniture, and we make sure that that is still all there.
02:35So actually, if you're coming to Petworth and you want to see the turners and the carved room, you can see those turners.
02:39But also you're in a room that feels really festive.
02:41So that's what we've kind of figured out, that people want at Petworth.
02:44They would like Christmas, but they also want to see Petworth House.
02:47So we make sure they can.
02:48And you're saying a lovely thing that the days of hushed reverence are over.
02:52You want noise in Petworth House at Christmas.
02:54We do, we do.
02:56And that's why we love Christmas the most, actually, us as staff and volunteers, because even though we don't want people to, we're in our quieter times.
03:03Like if we haven't got a huge number of people in the house, people kind of still walk around and feel that they need to be quiet.
03:09You feel that you have to, don't you?
03:10Yeah, you feel that you have to.
03:12There are old rules that we no longer have.
03:14So at Christmas, everyone's relaxed a little bit and everyone's laughing.
03:17We had a proposal in one of the Christmas rooms last year and the whole room erupted in applause.
03:21It was just beautiful.
03:22So, yeah, Christmas people relax and just feel that they can enjoy those spaces.
03:26And that's what we want to see.
03:28And last year, just under 35,000 people over five and a half weeks for the Christmas season.
03:33That's phenomenal, isn't it?
03:34Can you build on that? Do you want to just keep increasing that? Is that a hope?
03:38Yeah, so there's still capacity.
03:40Obviously, weekends are always the busiest.
03:42So weekends is when lots of people come.
03:44But yeah, in the weekdays, it's still a bit quieter.
03:46So actually, if people do want to come and they want to see Christmas, but they don't want it to be super busy, weekdays are a great choice.
03:52Even in the school holidays, weekdays are quieter.
03:55And even at the weekends, the afternoons are quieter than the mornings.
03:58So there is still that capacity for people to come.
04:00It doesn't feel crowded.
04:02It doesn't feel like you're in like a kind of a really busy environment, but it just feels kind of festive.
04:06And there's lots of people around also enjoying their visit.
04:09Fantastic. Well, you paint a beautifully seductive picture of Christmas at Petworth.
04:14Look forward to seeing it. Lovely to speak to you soon. Thank you.
04:17And you. Thank you.
04:18Merry Christmas.
04:19Merry Christmas to you too.