00:00My name's Pauline Lockett. I'm an executor to the Elizabeth Love Trust. Elizabeth Love was my best friend and she died eight years ago. My little husband and I, we took over the job of trying to turn their home into a museum.
00:19It's taken eight years and we finally arrived at the opening on the 1st of August. It's a wonderful old house. It was part of the main guard of Pontefract Castle in the 13th century, 14th century.
00:35After the Civil War, it was taken on by the Crown and used as a debtor's prison. It has been said it was the first in the country. Then it was used to house the Napoleonic War prisoners.
00:48And then from then on, it was used an awful lot until it was sold to a man called Mr. Farr. Mr. Farr opened it as an antique shop and in 1935, Queen Mary came and visited the house.
01:09We do have a photograph of this. This was then bought by Elizabeth and her brother and they made the home here. Neither of them was married, but they left a house full of interesting items, very local items.
01:30All they wanted was to fill the house. All they wanted was to fill the house so that when they've gone, it could be opened as a museum and people could see the heritage from the local area.
01:44And it's absolutely full of items, well worth a visit.
01:51And I'm very proud and happy that we've opened and I'm wanting to share it like Elizabeth wanted to share it with local people and people from far and wide.
02:07She has a wonderful collection of Castlefoot pottery, Ferry Bridge pottery, 41 clocks.
02:13She's got items of interest that, you know, what do you think this is, this type of thing.
02:20Very interesting and like curiosities, which interest not only experts, but to the, you know, the local people as well.
02:32But it's run now by the trust.
02:35We've got six trustees and numerous volunteers and even more people coming, wanting to be volunteers.
02:44This is something which encourages all of us.
02:48Everybody's as the wow factor when they come in.
02:52So, you know, we're hoping that this is going to continue.
02:57I've known Elizabeth for all about 45 years.
03:02She was a sister at the local hospital and she was very interested in anything historical.
03:11She was a member of the Archaeological Society and she was a member of the History Society.
03:18She was the speaker finder for the History Society.
03:22She was also on the local railway group.
03:25She was interested and always ready to listen to, you know, speakers and learn from them.
03:35Her knowledge was remarkable.
03:38A brother was the same.
03:40Joe died when he was 62.
03:43But they were both born in Halifax.
03:46Her first love was Castlefoot pottery.
03:49Joe bought her a meat plate, I don't know, a large meat plate for a birthday one year.
03:58And she loved it so much that she started looking for other pieces.
04:04That has been a lifelong collection because she's into Castleford pottery, very, very strong.
04:13She's, you know, she's got teapots and dishes and very old pieces of Castleford pottery, which date from 1780 to 1820.
04:24That was the David Dunderdale pottery.
04:28And then she's collected the Clokey pottery from Castleford and Hartrocks.
04:33She's fond of pottery.
04:36She's also got Ferry Bridge, which is quite rare.
04:41And that was important to her because she was interested in Wedgwood.
04:47And Ralph Wedgwood came to work in the late 18th century at Ferry Bridge pottery.
04:54And whether that, you know, decided on the patterns that they used, I don't know.
04:59But in fact, you can see sometimes a bit of Wedgwood if you look close into Ferry Bridge pottery.
05:07She then got into Clocks.
05:09Long case Clocks was wonderful to her.
05:13And she went with both of us and my husband.
05:16We went to tenants one year.
05:18She was going to, she kept bidding for this clock.
05:23And it was quite an expensive clock.
05:26She kept bidding and bidding and my husband had to say, Liz, don't bid any more because you've got, you know, commission to pay on the top of it.
05:35Anyway, she lost the clock, but she never got over that because she liked to buy when she wanted it.
05:41She wanted it.
05:43She bought a butter churn that was a Castleford made butter churn from Diss, from the auctioneer in Diss.
05:52And she rang Peter up to say, can you fetch it for me?
05:56And so we had a day out.
05:59We went to collect this butter churn that's a massive thing.
06:02And it's so heavy.
06:04Well, my husband had an earneer through it because it was so big.
06:08But it's wonderful.
06:10And it's in the house.
06:11And a remarkable, it's, you know, lasted so long because that was a David Dunderdale and it's a Mark David Dunderdale butter churn.
06:23There again, she also liked Russian things, very partial to Russian ceramics.
06:32And she's bought a beautiful clock from Hemswell that was Russian.
06:38She's got several pieces of pottery, several, well, items that, a spoon, a Russian spoon and a horse that's in ceramic.
06:49That's Russian.
06:52She's labelled everything.
06:54What she had, she had it labelled and catalogued.
06:57And when Peter and I had to deal with everything for the inventory, et cetera, we'd got the catalogues and she'd say she liked Delft.
07:09And, for example, on the fireplace, these Delft plates, everyone was named and marked.
07:16And where it was, you know, it's on the right or the left, it's in the centre, that particular plate.
07:21She did the same with everything she bought.
07:24Everything is catalogued.
07:26Everything is marked with a label on the bottom that said Joe and Elizabeth Love.
07:33And then it said, with a C for Castleford, with an F for Ferry Bridge.
07:39Russian was R-U-S-S.
07:43And then M for Miscellaneous.
07:46She was methodical in what she did.
07:49And I think she would have been an excellent nurse because she was a very kind person, very funny, very funny.
07:58But one story I can say about her is when I was at work at Pontefract Museum one day, she came in.
08:06I'm going to Leeds, I'm going to buy myself a new coat, which was very rare.
08:10She didn't buy a lot of clothes.
08:13When she came back, I said, did you get your coat, love?
08:16No, I bought a jampan, and that was Elizabeth.
08:21Collecting was the main thing in her life.
08:25And she was, well, she loved the house, and she just enjoyed all the items.
08:32In fact, Derek Jacoby came once.
08:36We'd been down to London to see him in Richard III, and I wrote to him and said how much we'd enjoyed it.
08:43If he was ever in the Pontefract and wanted to look round the castle, you know, we'd be delighted to show him.
08:51And he rang up, and he came.
08:52And he came in into Liz's and to the big hall, and we had sandwiches and a cup of tea, and he thoroughly enjoyed it.
09:03Lord St. Oswald from Nostla Priory was very well instrumental in starting her to make sure this was written down,
09:17that she wanted it to be a museum, because we were at a remembering service, and he was showing us around his business part,
09:25which was originally the Priory, and he's pointing out this.
09:29He says, have you ever seen a beam as long as this?
09:32And Elizabeth said, I have a bigger beam than that.
09:35Well, of course, he was intrigued, wanted to see it, so he came along, and he was blown away with the house, the contents.
09:45And he said, this must stay together.
09:48This collection's been collected all these years.
09:51It must stay together and not sold off.
09:54And that really cemented the idea that we wanted this as a museum.
10:00So, we went to the solicitor, she made a will, and put it down that this must be a museum.
10:10It's been very, very difficult.
10:13I can't say how difficult, but I've no longer got my husband.
10:17He died, but he had an awful lot of work to do.
10:21But we've been fortunate to have a group of people now, Michael Britton, Jeanette England, Peter Miles,
10:32lots of wonderful volunteers, and together we've worked to get it open.
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