Do you notice whether you go in through the front door or some sort of grotty back entrance when you turn up at a historic house or National Trust stately home? You should. These are houses, after all, they were designed to be lived in and the front door is the entrance with impact. If you come and dutifully pay for entry, you are a guest, the payment proves that you have a right to be there and are welcome. So frankly, you should come in through the front door.
Why not go in at the front?
This is a bit of a bugbear with me. Houses were carefully designed for living in. The architect and owner probably spent some time making sure that your first step inside had a bit of impact. Yet today, you are just as likely to be sent in through the kitchen or the cellar. To be fair there are many reasons for this, often it is just to make sure you can follow a reasonably logical tour route and not spend your whole time doubling back, or sometimes it is simply to preserve a resident family’s privacy. But bravo for Bamburgh Castle who have just moved their visitor entrance from a rather bleak passage at the bottom of the castle to the anteroom to the magnificent King’s Hall.
Now you walk into a room designed to set the scene for the centrepiece of the castle: William Armstrong’s bravura reconstruction of a medieval Great Hall complete with hammerbeam roof, screen and dais. Stepping out of the inner courtyard, where the medieval elements of this great castle still stand strong, into some of the best work of its Victorian resurrection in the 1890s, helps you connect its history up. Hurrah for Bamburgh Castle for making its visitors feel more like guests.
Stick 'em in a tunnel!
Don't forget it's only a couple of hundred years since Sir Walter Scott, fed up with the number of visitors clogging up his view of the garden at Abbotsford in the Borders, had a sunken walkway dug for them so that they would be led straight to the cellars and not impinge upon his peace. Now it has all changed; Abbotsford's visitors walk straight into the great writer's entrance hall packed with a wild array of fascinating objects from skulls and tribal carvings to suits of armour. Much better than the cellar; how nice to know that today’s historic house owners are a bit more appreciative of their visitors.