Development

PROPOSED DEVELOPMENTS 2009 onwards

VISITOR'S CENTRE

A brand new building built on the Rectory’s Croft, to provide a new location for the shop, and a new café and facilities, with views of the Rectory. This will look out to a patio area with further café tables, and a newly created orchard with varieties of trees grown in the eighteenth century.

Here, visitors will be able to come and spend time in comfortable surroundings. This will be accessed from an extended car park. Those wishing to visit the Old Rectory can purchase tickets in this centre. The garden will be available for picnics and children’s games and visitors can also enjoy the Physic Garden.

REFURBISHED RECTORY

From the Visitors’ Centre, visitors will be able to access the Old Rectory through a newly built glazed passage which will also display temporary exhibitions. They will be able to experience a short orientation in the refurbished education area and then approach the Rectory through the main door. There they will be transported back 300 years. They can learn more about the remarkable Wesley family in the authentic setting of their home.

Children and school parties will be able to ‘become’ part of the family and see what it was like to be educated in the home, through drama and interactive displays. We will work closely with local schools to tailor their visits to areas of learning on the national curriculum.

We hope that this will become even more a place of inspiration and challenge.  New exhibition spaces will be opened up so that many more pictures and artefacts will be on display to help tell the story of the lives and influence of the Wesley family. Exhibitions will be changed frequently so there will always be more to experience at Epworth Old Rectory.

The main features of the refurbishment will be to :

  • Install a lift
  • Remove all twentieth century furnishings, including the mantelpieces and floor coverings
  • Remove modern walls and restore early eighteenth century features
  • Source period furniture and present some rooms as period rooms (as the Wesleys used them) and some as exhibition rooms.

Epworth Old Rectory is a grade 1 listed building. English Heritage have now given their approval for both parts of the development. Applications have been made for listed building consent and planning permission. Alongside these developments, we have been working on audience development, holding many special events (such as candlelit tours, guided walks in Epworth, concerts and a craft fair), building our profile, and applying to become an accredited museum.

Would you like to be involved now and/or in the future?

We would be delighted if you choose one or more of the following options:

  • Visit the Old Rectory and encourage your friends and family to come.
  • Support the special events at the Old Rectory
  • Become a Friend of the Old Rectory – receiving regular newsletters, free admission and information about forthcoming events.
  • Become a volunteer at the Old Rectory – to guide visitors, to staff the shop and the new cafe, to help with caring for the collection, or to work in the garden.
  • Give a donation to help the vision to become a reality.

Please get in touch if you would like further information :
Telephone : 01427 872268
Email us with your views

To see this document with a Site Plan in Microsoft WORD format click here.
Please note, this document is 10 Meg in size.

Epworth Old Rectory Fly Around Video