Erddig: Image from the National Trust Website https://www.nationaltrust.org.uk/erddig
Sounding Erddig: Workshops on Music and Sound
Music, Home and Heritage: Sounding the Domestic in Georgian Britain is a project funded by the AHRC. The project is led by Professor Jeanice Brooks, University of Southampton and Wiebke Thormählen, Royal College of Music,. Read more about the project here.
Part of this project involved the exploration of sound and music at Erddig House in Wrexham.
Errdig was built in 1684 and is home to a wonderful array of instruments and furniture spanning almost four centuries. The Music, Home and Heritage Team have discovered some amazing facts about the type of music that was played in the house during some of this period.
So what happens when we visit a house like this? We walk around different rooms and look at the grandeur of the house and try to imagine people living there all those years ago. But do we ever think about what that may have sounded like? What did the house sound like when it was full of family members and servants, with people coming and going, food being prepared, clothes being washed and dried, people playing music during social gatherings, doors closing perhaps as the house settled down for the night? How did the sound of the house change over time perhaps when there were family events such as births, deaths and marriages? What affect did World War I and II have on this domestic soundscape? What happened when families got smaller down through the generations when sons didn't get married or have children? Did the house become quieter?
In October 2019 The Sound Heritage Team invited me to Erddig House which is a National Trust property to make some recordings and work with volunteers. We discussed the domestic soundscape within the house with the volunteers some of which have been volunteering at Erddig for nearly 30 years.
During the 2 days I went around the house with volunteers and The Music, Home and Heritage team where we spent a few hours making recordings in some of the rooms within the house while it was closed to visitors.
The volunteers were divided into two groups and each group visited different rooms within the house discussing the various sounds and activities that may have been heard within these spaces. Each group had a recording device so they could record sounds as they went from room to room.
One of the highlights for me was visiting the chapel. We spent a lot of time re-enacting different scenarios in this space such as the family entering the chapel, the priest saying some prayers, the family praying and the cleaners cleaning which were all recorded.
While we were visiting different rooms I left a recording setup on the first floor near the gallery which was left running for a few hours. For me this was a very special recording that captured the natural ambience of the house such as footsteps, people talking, creaky floorboards, the sound of the organ and the continuous sound of a grandfather clock ticking. There are grandfather clocks all over the house but they are all a few minutes ahead or behind one another. When they strike on the hour there is a few minutes delay between each of them and their chimes are also slightly different in pitch and timbre. These were some of my favourite sounds within the house.
During the workshop we visited the following rooms: the dry and wet laundry, bakery, kitchen, servants hall, servants dining room, chapel, servants bedrooms in the attic, other bedrooms, nursery, dining room, drawing room, music room and library. In some of the rooms we were able to interact with objects and re-enact some of the activities that may have been part of daily life at the house e.g. washing clothes in the wet laundry, moving metal drying racks and wicker baskets in the dry laundry, clattering pots and pans in the kitchen and opening oven doors in the bakery. I was even able to capture the sound of a crackling fire in the dairy.
The team were very interested in discovering how far music and sound travelled within the house when family members and servants were playing their instruments. One of the servants played the violin in her room in the attic so we had project leader Wiebke Thormählen, play the violin in the attic. While she was playing I had three different recording setups placed on various floors recording different perspectives of the sound travelling throughout the house. One of the local volunteers played the organ in the Entrance Hall (Music Room) and this was also recorded in three different places capturing the sense of space and acoustics from the ground floor, the 1st floor and the attic. So if someone was playing the violin in the attic could the servants in the kitchen hear the sound? Yes they could!
As a result of the two days and about 5 handheld recorders I have created a comprehensive sound library with all of the recordings. We hope that somehow these recordings can be used to interpret the history of Erddig through sound.
You can visit the collection of recordings here.
On this page you will find a collection of MUSIC and SOUND recordings. We hope that these recordings will be used in future projects. They are free to
download and may be used under the Creative Commons licence
For more information on the project visit:
sound-heritage.ac.uk/
https://sound-heritage.ac.uk/sounding-erddig
www.nationaltrust.org.uk/erddig
Music, Home and Heritage: Sounding the Domestic in Georgian Britain is a project funded by the AHRC. The project is led by Professor Jeanice Brooks, University of Southampton and Wiebke Thormählen, Royal College of Music,. Read more about the project here.
Part of this project involved the exploration of sound and music at Erddig House in Wrexham.
Errdig was built in 1684 and is home to a wonderful array of instruments and furniture spanning almost four centuries. The Music, Home and Heritage Team have discovered some amazing facts about the type of music that was played in the house during some of this period.
So what happens when we visit a house like this? We walk around different rooms and look at the grandeur of the house and try to imagine people living there all those years ago. But do we ever think about what that may have sounded like? What did the house sound like when it was full of family members and servants, with people coming and going, food being prepared, clothes being washed and dried, people playing music during social gatherings, doors closing perhaps as the house settled down for the night? How did the sound of the house change over time perhaps when there were family events such as births, deaths and marriages? What affect did World War I and II have on this domestic soundscape? What happened when families got smaller down through the generations when sons didn't get married or have children? Did the house become quieter?
In October 2019 The Sound Heritage Team invited me to Erddig House which is a National Trust property to make some recordings and work with volunteers. We discussed the domestic soundscape within the house with the volunteers some of which have been volunteering at Erddig for nearly 30 years.
During the 2 days I went around the house with volunteers and The Music, Home and Heritage team where we spent a few hours making recordings in some of the rooms within the house while it was closed to visitors.
The volunteers were divided into two groups and each group visited different rooms within the house discussing the various sounds and activities that may have been heard within these spaces. Each group had a recording device so they could record sounds as they went from room to room.
One of the highlights for me was visiting the chapel. We spent a lot of time re-enacting different scenarios in this space such as the family entering the chapel, the priest saying some prayers, the family praying and the cleaners cleaning which were all recorded.
While we were visiting different rooms I left a recording setup on the first floor near the gallery which was left running for a few hours. For me this was a very special recording that captured the natural ambience of the house such as footsteps, people talking, creaky floorboards, the sound of the organ and the continuous sound of a grandfather clock ticking. There are grandfather clocks all over the house but they are all a few minutes ahead or behind one another. When they strike on the hour there is a few minutes delay between each of them and their chimes are also slightly different in pitch and timbre. These were some of my favourite sounds within the house.
During the workshop we visited the following rooms: the dry and wet laundry, bakery, kitchen, servants hall, servants dining room, chapel, servants bedrooms in the attic, other bedrooms, nursery, dining room, drawing room, music room and library. In some of the rooms we were able to interact with objects and re-enact some of the activities that may have been part of daily life at the house e.g. washing clothes in the wet laundry, moving metal drying racks and wicker baskets in the dry laundry, clattering pots and pans in the kitchen and opening oven doors in the bakery. I was even able to capture the sound of a crackling fire in the dairy.
The team were very interested in discovering how far music and sound travelled within the house when family members and servants were playing their instruments. One of the servants played the violin in her room in the attic so we had project leader Wiebke Thormählen, play the violin in the attic. While she was playing I had three different recording setups placed on various floors recording different perspectives of the sound travelling throughout the house. One of the local volunteers played the organ in the Entrance Hall (Music Room) and this was also recorded in three different places capturing the sense of space and acoustics from the ground floor, the 1st floor and the attic. So if someone was playing the violin in the attic could the servants in the kitchen hear the sound? Yes they could!
As a result of the two days and about 5 handheld recorders I have created a comprehensive sound library with all of the recordings. We hope that somehow these recordings can be used to interpret the history of Erddig through sound.
You can visit the collection of recordings here.
On this page you will find a collection of MUSIC and SOUND recordings. We hope that these recordings will be used in future projects. They are free to
download and may be used under the Creative Commons licence
For more information on the project visit:
sound-heritage.ac.uk/
https://sound-heritage.ac.uk/sounding-erddig
www.nationaltrust.org.uk/erddig
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Listening to the Past article published in the National Trust Magazine, Autumn 2022
The Sound Erddig project features in the lates publication of the National Trust. You can scan QR codes to hear some of the music and sounds recorded for the project. |
