At the September meeting of the Rotary Club of Rotherham, members were enthralled by an illustrated talk given by Steve Ash of the Wentworth Woodhouse Preservation Trust. What a fascinating character he is, and he left a lasting impression on club members. After retiring from a senior position in digital marketing, but anxious to once again be part of a team, he answered the call from the Head Gardener at the House to be part of his. And so, the man who hated gardening started a new, and outdoor, vocation at one of the nation’s grandest stately homes – Wentworth Woodhouse, Rotherham.
His background in the digital world prompted him to accept another challenge – setting up a digital team to capture the Preservation Trust’s restoration project on film, as a permanent record as well as for marketing purposes. Steve’s description of how the digital team was set up was awe-inspiring and, learning new film-making skills as he went along, he created a team of student volunteers, all with promising careers ahead, and melded them into a unit which was to create an invaluable number of short films about the Trust, its people, the challenges it faces and its ambitions.
But he was far too modest to dwell on the accolade afforded to him, as ‘Digital Heritage Hero’ for his outstanding contribution to heritage volunteering, one of only two given out in the annual Heritage Heroes Awards sponsored by the specialist heritage insurer Ecclesiastical. In the time available he rattled through a dizzying volume of information and excellent images, both from a digital and historical context. One of these showed the discovery of what lay behind the drab, age-stained portraits in the Chapel – St Anthony is being beautifully restored. Steve concluded by talking of Trust’s plans for commercial use of some of the largely derelict and forlorn buildings on the site, and of course in the present, many of us know and have experienced the amazing Camellia House Restaurant with its historic camellias.