DERBYSHIRE COUNTY COUNCIL, DESTROYERS OF HERITAGE By Rifleman

If anyone is still in doubt about the lies and neglect perpetrated by Derbyshire County Council at Elvaston, here are some more photographs which tell the sickening truth about the neglect which can only be described as pig-ignorance.

As well as boxes of rotting horse-harness, tools, equipment and various other artefacts, including rare machinery, there is a building which caught fire in the roof space seven years ago. The fire was blamed on vandals but was rumoured to have actually occurred because water entered through an unrepaired hole in the roof and got into the electrics. The ‘caring’ council have done nothing in the last SEVEN years, not even to have the ranger staff move the charred roof timbers from the machinery that they landed on.

Have the rangers been hiding or just being used elsewhere in Derbyshire? This is the collection that Jim Grevatte, Museum Development Officer for the East Midlands Museums and Libraries Association (EMMLAC), said that he was "satisfied that everything possible was being done to safeguard the collection." It doesn’t say much for the so called ‘professionals’ does it? These photographs were taken very recently.

The County Council is trying to deliver this as something which has just ‘happened,’ completely glossing over the fact that it has happened due to their complete and utter neglect, and their contempt and ignorance of anywhere south of Matlock. We hope that if you are looking at these pictures and can do something about it, whoever you are, DON’T LET THEM GET AWAY WITH IT!

As well as all this, there is a flax-retting frame which was torn out by the contractors who were carrying out the restoration work on the boathouse. So much for sensitive restoration. A bit like the water wheel which broke down shortly after an expensive restoration twenty years ago and has been left ever since. After all, it’s only money – yours and mine!

Flax was turned into linen on many country estates, home produced linen was highly valued and handed down along with the family silver. More enlightened estates like Shugborough have these processes well documented and incorporated into the museums there. The frame was used to hold the flax stems under water to break down the harder outer fibres as the second part of the process, the first being harvesting.

In the case of the frame at Elvaston, it was ripped out by a digger driver so that the workmen could get closer to the boathouse foundations. Any caring County Council would have had a conservation officer present who DID know what he was doing. This was, however, Derbyshire County Council!

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