Hard labour of love for volunteers

Remarkably, all this has happened thanks to just two members of staff, and a dedicated team of volunteers. Sue Mackay is the Workhouse Museum’s Learning and Access Officer. Her job is to make the museum as interesting and accessible as possible, and she finds the volunteers her most valuable resource. “There’s a lot of competition for volunteers in this area, but most of the people who volunteer here also volunteer somewhere else, because people who do, do, ” she said.

One of those volunteers is Drene Brooks, who at 74 years old has been a stalwart of the Workhouse Museum for eight years. She does “desk duties” in the museum’s ticket office, plays a part in the regular living history days and until recently helped out at local schools listening to children read. “I love it here, and I’ve lots of friends and the museum has dragged me through pneumonia and a heart operation, she says. When she first started, she would ask her husband Roy to collect her. Now Roy, too, has a regular role as the Workhouse’s porter, welcoming visitors and, when a school party visits, moving them through the museum.

Drene’s favourite job is her role as “workhouse laundry maid”, wearing period costume and showing school groups and visitors round the Victorian laundry and, more often than not, roping them in to help out with the mangle and dolly tub. Another character is Matron, played by long-standing volunteer, Shirley Jones, who at 15 years service out-does even Drene and Roy. “I’ve just had my 84th birthday, but keeping going keeps you going, doesn’t it?” she said.

“I moved to Ripon in 1995 and started here in 1996. I love North Yorkshire, and I love volunteering because I like to be with the children.” She is not afraid of letting volunteers, visitors and school parties see how harsh her Victorian counterpart could have been on the Workhouse’s inmates. “Matron comes out here and shouts at me, and the children think it’s gospel, ” Drene said. “We have had tears from a few of the more sensitive children, but often the teachers ask if they can take me back with them,” Shirley added.

When the school summer holidays were in full swing the museums changed their programmes to suit. Weekly living history Tuesdays and family activities every Friday afternoon offer a variety of entertainments – from solving crimes to digging for beasts and bugs in the Workhouse garden.

In July, Sue organised a re-enactment of one of the Victorians’ more gruesome punishments with a public whipping in Ripon’s market square. The fate of a 19th century petty thief was played out for the town the witness, with a bound convict led through the streets to a crowded market place where they were, as the original conviction demanded, “whipt until their back be bloody.”

The museums’ dedicated volunteers didn’t let Sue or the waiting crowds down, and once again took centre stage.