Abbotsford House

On Monday morning we left Traquair and got the bus to Abbotsford House, the historic home of Scottish poet and writer Sir Walter Scott. We got given a tour first around the house, then the garden. It was different to other historic houses and Palaces in that it is Victorian, built in 1822.
The Library was interesting - it contains 9000 books including a 1st edition of Grimms fairytales. Then room following this is known as the Chinese Drawing Room because of the Chinese wallpaper which is very uncharacteristic of a Scottish historic house.
They are currently facing challenges with interpreting some of their spaces and how to repurpose these to improve visitor engagement. The three spaces in particular are a temporary exhibition space, the Garden Pavilion and the Flag Tower.
We got into three groups. My group was in charge of coming up with an idea of how to utilise the temporary exhibition space. We came up with the idea of a Reading Nook - the room would contain couches, a bookshelf with Walter Scott’s novels, and iPads with digitised pages of older fragile editions. Each group presented their ideas to the staff.