00:00Hello, my name is Luke Patrick, I'm reporter for the Blackpool Gazette. I'm here at the
00:03Blackpool Tower ballroom for the annual cleaning of the Edwardian chandeliers
00:07in the Tower ballroom. However, this is an extra special occasion as for the first time in 50 years
00:12the rope mechanism that holds the chandeliers up is being changed.
00:16I spoke to the operations manager of Blackpool Tower, Aaron Edgar, about how it all works.
00:30So, if you could introduce yourself and tell us why, tell me why we're here today?
00:47Yes, my name's Aaron Edgar, I'm the head of operations here at Blackpool Tower.
00:53Perfect, and so if you tell me what's going on today and what's...
00:58Yeah, so this is our annual event here at Blackpool Tower where we bring our 14 Edwardian
01:05chandeliers down from the very top of the Tower ballroom to the Tower ballroom floor.
01:09You can see one of the largest ones behind me here, we've got two of these large chandeliers
01:13and then we have 12 of our smaller chandeliers which are still nearly three feet tall
01:17around the side of the ballroom. The chandeliers in total have over 10,000
01:23individual pieces of crystal made in Italy on the chandeliers themselves.
01:28So, every year we bring these chandeliers down from the very top of the Tower ballroom,
01:32they have a spring clean so the crystal is cleaned and these bulbs are changed and then
01:36they're hoisted back up. One of the key differences is the chandelier behind me here
01:42is actually, it's not been done for at least 50 years, it could be even longer,
01:47but the central rope support which is the thing that hoists the chandelier up and down from us
01:53is being replaced which is the first time in 50 years so that's pretty special.
01:57To be able to do that we've had to have a specialist team come in and they've had to
02:00build the structure behind me to suspend the chandelier in place for the duration of the works
02:06so as it stands at the minute the chandelier is being held at this level by the structure
02:11and is currently not connected to the very top of the ballroom which is the first time,
02:15very long time it's happened. Can you tell me a little bit about,
02:18you were just talking a second ago about the origin of the chandeliers,
02:23where they were made and stuff like that? Yeah so the crystal was made in Italy,
02:28the frames were here but they've been here, well they're Edwardian so they've been here
02:33for a very long time. So the ballroom opened in 1894, these were added sort of around,
02:38well let's think 20 years later to these chandeliers you see now so that's why it's
02:43so important every year we do bring them down, we make sure that they're all well looked after
02:47and then taken back up to the very top of the ballroom. How long does this whole process take?
02:54So it takes around a week, so this process that we're doing today is completely new to us,
03:00so the people we've got here are specialists, they've done it elsewhere, you know you can
03:05imagine venues I don't know such as the Royal Albert Hall and so on but it's the first time
03:09we've done it here so we are taking our time. It will be open at the weekend but the works
03:13will take place around that so we expect by the weekend the two large chandeliers should be
03:19back up at the top of the ballroom. So you talked about you've got a team of specialists coming in,
03:24how would you actually clean the chandeliers without breaking anything? I know I wouldn't
03:31trust myself. So the crystal itself is like I say it's all hand cut from Italy so each piece
03:39so these lower sections here is taken off one by one so they're held together with the original
03:43pins and then we have like a wire that goes around that keeps it in place as a secondary.
03:48They'll all be taken off very delicately because they are very brittle and they will be hand
03:53cleaned literally with like a microfiber, like a micro cloth with a little tiny bit of a special
04:00detergent that's for doing this kind of activity that brings the shine right back into it so you
04:06don't need to do a lot it's purely what you can see here really it's a lot of dust it's a large
04:11room we operate all the way through the year and it's a once a year activity that we do
04:16and part of the reason it's once a year is to preserve the chandeliers for as long as possible
04:20yeah like I said the crystal does become very brittle but by doing it this way we make sure
04:24it's looked after for the long term. What kind of problems do the chandeliers face that
04:32won't need to be fixed during this period? To be honest they're actually all in pretty good
04:36condition for this year there's nothing actually we've spotted that's very significant
04:40what we're doing now because it's the first time we've done it here the person that's involved
04:45has been lowering these chandeliers every year for us since 1984 so he's been here for a long
04:51time right that isn't the challenge the challenge for us is working with the specialist team to
04:55change the ropes outside of that the chandeliers themselves because they are very brittle we have
05:01to be extremely careful that there are no breakages I've been here for 14 years and I
05:06don't think we've had no we haven't had any breakages to the crystal the most we've had is
05:11a second as needed repair so other than that it doesn't cause us any huge challenges because we
05:16really take our time and the team that involved really understand the importance of what it is
05:21they're doing
05:43well can you get them to hold it there?
05:51okay
06:51you
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