Clandon Park Royal Bedroom Restoration
Photo: National Trust Images / Anthony Parkinson1/12The State Bedroom before the fire. The matching curtains and chairs were both made around 1710.
Photo: National Trust Images / James Dobson2/12The State Bedroom and State Bed after the fire—and finally reached. “I knew that [a] needlepoint was being carefully stored underneath the State Bed, but I was holding my breath because we did not know what we would find,” Sophie Chessum says of a rare 18th-century piece from the Queen Anne period. “As we dismantled the [bed],” she continues, “bit by bit we were able to first see the box, which we hoped still had the [piece] inside.”
Photo: National Trust Images / James Dobson3/12A closer look at the State Bed, which Chessum and others are hoping to eventually be able to reinstate. To get the bed out of the estate, volunteers first removed a modern bolster pillow to reveal a destroyed horsehair mattress. Below that layer, a modern bed sat atop the historic bed.
Photo: National Trust Images / James Dobson4/12Workers move the decorative headboard, which, like the rest of the frame, is 300 years old.
Photo: National Trust Images / James Dobson5/12The conservation process begins. Valances, braided passementerie, and other textile trimmings that were found had all been removed as step one of the move.
