SPRING cleaning has to start early at Warwick Castle
So a specialist cleaning crew began the new year by scaling ladders and scaffolds to give the historic venue a deep clean ready for a busy year ahead.
Warwick Castle’s team of conservation experts cleaned various antiques and artefacts around the castle.
Among the relics getting a spruce were five chandeliers in the Cedar Drawing Room, where the Lebanese cedar wood panelling dates back to the 1670s. Each chandelier is comprised of approximately 2,500 crystals, making dusting and cleaning each chandelier a painstaking task.
Panelled by two Warwickshire master carpenters, Roger and William Hurlbutt, the Cedar Drawing Room was used throughout history for grand dinners and dances.
When electricity came to the castle in 1894, the drawing room – with its impressive chandeliers – was the first room in the castle to have electricity so guests could dance into the night.
And ten shining knights’ suit of armour, including a child’s armour rumoured to belong to Charles II, were also given a specialist clean.
Home to one of the largest open collections of armour in the UK, the suits were polished with fine wire wool and specialist wax. Each suit of armour is made from steel and iron, weighs approximately 25kg and takes one full day to clean.
Other treasures were polished, dusted and buffed including the antlers of an extinct great Irish elk, which is around 10,000 years old and was found in a peat bog, as well as hundreds of pieces of glassware and silverware.
Castle general manager Liam Bartlett said: “Forget knights of the round table, we’ve brought in knights and their round buckets this week to buff, wax and scrub the castle’s artefacts ahead of a very busy year.”
