For auld lang syne

The first, and most challenging, property was Culzean Castle.

The quantity of items held here, alongside a large number of collection pieces on loan from the Kennedy family, resulted in several months being spent cataloguing the contents of this 18th-century castle. The Armoury alone contained over 1,100 items, mainly swords, guns and bayonets. The previous recording of the collection here, which took place over the last five or six decades, could often be confusing. For example, there were several instances of objects having been catalogued two or three times, with different numbers given each time.

Throughout the team’s work, one figure loomed large over the majority of our properties – Robert Burns. We worked at the Robert Burns Birthplace Museum, which is less than 10 years old, as well as at Burns Cottage, which pre-dates it by around 250 years. Both properties contained a myriad of items connected to Burns, some of national, and indeed global, importance. Additionally, we worked at Souter Johnnie’s Cottage in Kirkoswald and Bachelors’ Club in Tarbolton – both significant places in the story of Robert Burns. The small cottage in Tarbolton has a large display of Mauchline Ware, which was produced just a few miles from the village. Souter Johnnie’s contains a huge amount of shoemaking implements, reflecting the original use of the cottage as a souter’s (shoemaker’s) workshop.

Broughton House, the first of our three properties in Dumfries & Galloway, also has a significant Robert Burns connection. E A Hornel, the renowned artist and member of the Glasgow Boys collective, was a serious collector of material relating to Burns. The house holds one of the largest privately collected sets of Burns books, manuscripts and memorabilia in the world. Sadly, the books and manuscripts weren’t included as part of Project Reveal, at least not Stage One. Broughton House also contains a large amount of artwork, as well as collection pieces from Hornel’s travels in Japan. The team also came across some unusual items, such as the chauffeur’s comforter, kimonos, and plaster death masks. The sheer amount of the collection is certainly not in proportion to the size of this townhouse property.

Our next property, Thomas Carlyle’s Birthplace, was the furthest afield, being just 8 miles north-west of the English border. This three-room pend cottage, home of the renowned philosopher and writer, raised some minor logistical issues in that there was neither running water nor toilet facilities. The village in which the property stands is also famous for the local delicacy, the Ecclefechan tart. We felt it was imperative that we try this local dessert – more than once – just to blend in!

Our final property, which is ongoing as we write, is Threave House in Castle Douglas. A big advantage of working here is that part of the building operates as accommodation for gardening students, so the house is always nice and warm. There's a huge social history collection on display here, with everything imaginable you would find in the working kitchen of a large country house, from toasting forks and jelly moulds to large kitchen tables and a cooking range.

In conclusion, we visited a broad range of properties, with many collection items to catalogue, describe, measure, photograph and number. As expected, Culzean came out on top in terms of the number of objects recorded by the team, with a total of 4,714.

Broughton House, which also holds a significant book collection, had an impressive 3,112 object records inventoried.

Next was Robert Burns Birthplace Museum with 1,048. Each of the smaller properties also contained a lot more objects than we first envisaged and it was a privilege to get the opportunity to work with so many fantastic collections.

As we approach the end of our time with Project Reveal there is both a sense of achievement and of sadness that we’ll soon all be going our separate ways, at least until the next big Trust cataloguing project!

Au revoir.

Project Reveal is a Trust-wide collections digitisation project. It will result in an updated database with high-quality images and unique object numbers for every item in the National Trust for Scotland’s material culture collections. Six regionally based project teams, supported by experienced project managers, will work across all our properties with collections to complete the inventory in 24 months from July 2017 until July 2019.