Lessons from Winterbourne House and Garden

There are places where heritage feels staged, reconstructed, mediated through screens, ropes, and oversized labels that tell you what to think. Winterbourne is not one of those places. Instead, it feels lived-in, layered with traces of the past and the quiet rhythms of everyday use.

I first encountered it through the British Cultural Heritage Summer School at the University of Birmingham, where Winterbourne became both the subject of my presentation and a lens through which to reflect on the wider questions facing heritage today.

The English heritage sector is caught in delicate balances: between conservation and access, authenticity and interpretation, nostalgia and relevance. Many historic houses risk becoming static displays, their vitality drained by over-curation or underfunding. In this context, Winterbourne stands out not because it avoids these challenges, but because it lives within them, and reveals them. The site asks us to think about heritage not as something neatly resolved, but as a set of ongoing negotiations.

This was the perspective that shaped my reflections: I was less interested in recounting Winterbourne’s Edwardian history than in exploring the tensions it embodies. From its layered domestic narratives to its cultivated yet biodiverse gardens, from its ties to Birmingham’s industrial expansion to the intimacy of its interiors, Winterbourne shows us that heritage is not the art of erasing contradictions, but of holding them together.

Winterbourne House and Garden: Origins and Evolution

Winterbourne is a rare surviving Arts & Crafts suburban villa, built in 1903 for John and Margaret Nettlefold of Guest, Keen & Nettlefolds (GKN). Nettlefold, a pioneer of town planning and a committed social reformer, imbued the house with ideals of progress and domestic harmony. Remarkably modern for its time, the house boasted electric lighting, hot running water, and a telephone line when completed. Later occupied by John MacDonald Nicolson, its last private owner, the villa was acquired by the University of Birmingham in 1944. Its seven-acre garden, designed in the spirit of Gertrude Jekyll, was subsequently Grade II listed by English Heritage. Since then, Winterbourne has evolved into a multifunctional site: at once a historic house museum, botanic garden, gallery, letterpress workshop, typographic library, RHS teaching centre, venue for events, and a daily refuge for locals and students.

The Art of Negotiating Tensions

If there is one throughline to my time at Winterbourne, it is that heritage management is the practice of negotiating tensions. The site does not pretend these tensions can be solved once and for all; it manages them with care, evidence, and intention.

1) Conservation and Access

Balancing conservation and access is always a difficult choice for a heritage site. Objects, interiors, and plant collections need protection. Yet they only matter if people can encounter them. When the house opened to the public in 2010, it experimented with multimedia and interactive displays. Over time, the team deliberately removed the screens and sound effects, not due to budget constraints, but out of a commitment to a different visitor experience. Ropes are absent, and labels are minimal, small framed texts resting lightly on furniture. Visitors are invited to move as if in a home, to linger in the sunlit rooms, to notice the intricate craftsmanship, or to explore the gardens at their own pace. It does not stage history; it allows you to live in it, fostering trust, respectful engagement, and a subtle, light-touch approach that honours both the collections and the curiosity of those who encounter them.

2) Authenticity and Reinterpretation

Very little of the furniture is original to the Nettlefolds. The majority has been acquired through donations and purchases, with pieces and decorations selected to match old photographs of the house. Considerable restoration has gone into evoking the house’s appearance in the early 1920s. The team is transparent about this, using materials, textures, and spatial flow to create historical legibility rather than a theatrical reconstruction. Authenticity here is not a fixed state; it is an honest, evolving conversation.

3) Biodiversity and Visitor Experience

As curator Henrietta Lockhart explained during our walk, the garden must balance wildlife habitats with designed order. Too much emphasis on biodiversity risks making the spaces feel unruly; too much control risks stripping them of ecological richness. The team continually adjusts planting, borders, and mowing regimes to hold both values together.

4) Climate Change and English Native Species

Warming conditions are already reshaping what can thrive in the garden. The team faces a quiet tension: whether to introduce resilient, non-native species better suited to the changing climate, or to maintain English native species traditionally used in the garden, even as they falter. This dilemma echoes a point made by Matt Thompson, Conservation, Curatorial, and Learning Director at English Heritage, who reminded us in his guest lecture that climate change compels us to consider not only what we preserve, but also what we choose to let go.

5) Inclusivity and Focus

Winterbourne made a deliberate choice not to try too hard to cater to every possible audience. Its core visitors have traditionally been older adults seeking calm, beauty, and time to think, alongside University of Birmingham students who enjoy free access. Families are not excluded — there are children’s trails and a dedicated children’s garden — but the site resists a noisy, hands-on model that might compromise its contemplative character. Focus here is not gatekeeping; it is clarity.

These decisions resonate with a wider conversation from the programme with Matt Thompson: you cannot please everyone or preserve everything. You must decide who you are serving, what you are sustaining, and how you will measure value.

Living Heritage: The Hands That Shape Winterbourne

This philosophy is not only embedded in its spaces, but carried daily by the people who care for it. Fewer than 20 core paid contract staff sustain the site. Curator Henrietta Lockhart leads with quiet resolve, overseeing archives, research, and interpretation, often without a dedicated curatorial team. Interns and a network of 120 volunteers fill vital roles, forming a stewardship that is both resourceful and deeply committed.

Volunteers keep the Winterbourne Press alive, operating 19th-century printing presses and running demonstrations and workshops that connect visitors with the tactile history of print. Others support the second-hand bookshop, tend the gardens, and assist with collections care. Their presence is not peripheral; it is foundational.

Layers Upon Layers

Part of Winterbourne’s richness is how many histories intersect here:

Domestic life: Arts & Crafts architecture by Joseph Lancaster Ball, featuring the distinctive wavy roofline and south-east facing principal rooms designed to catch natural light.

Industrial legacy: The GKN Collection links Winterbourne to Birmingham’s manufacturing heritage through catalogues, photographs, and company archives, tracing the Nettlefold family’s industrial achievements.
Botany and science: The University Herbarium, established in the early 1900s, now holds over 60,000 specimens, preserving more than a century of botanical knowledge.
Print culture: Working presses, a Typographic Library, and public workshops connect the site to Birmingham’s vibrant history of printing and typographic innovation.
Education and care: Winterbourne once served as a female student residence before evolving into a teaching facility used by several University departments. That pedagogical function continues today through RHS qualifications and public programmes, embedding sustainability and curiosity from early years onward.

This layering matters. Heritage here is not frozen at a single date. It is a living record, continually inscribed, each addition negotiated against the integrity of what came before.

Structural resilience is part of this layering too. Winterbourne draws income from a patchwork of sources: entry fees, memberships, events and weddings, tea room revenue, retail, artist commissions, Arts Council funding, and University support. These interwoven streams allow the site to sustain its mission without over-reliance on any single model. It is not only the stories that are layered; it is the scaffolding that holds them.

Resilience by Design: Winterbourne in Context

This section draws from a presentation I gave during the British Cultural Heritage Summer School, where I contrasted Winterbourne with Ironbridge Valley of Invention. Ironbridge’s scale, UNESCO status, and network of museums are impressive, but they also create financial pressures: some smaller sites, such as Broseley Pipeworks, the Darby Houses, and the Tar Tunnel, have faced closure due to declining visitor numbers and operational costs.

Winterbourne’s resilience lies not in its small scale or institutional leverage alone, but in strategy and positioning. During the Covid-19 pandemic, its garden became its greatest asset. While many heritage houses struggled behind closed doors, Winterbourne was able to reopen as a safe outdoor refuge, regaining audiences and, in the process, earning heightened recognition within the University.

Its adaptability is also rooted in programming. Winterbourne’s diverse activities are not arbitrary, but grounded in its own layered history and distinctive assets. Its RHS courses grow naturally out of the botanic garden; its letterpress workshops and typographic library connect directly to Birmingham’s print heritage; its tea room provides not just income but a core reason for visits — ‘a heritage site like this cannot survive without a decent tearoom,’ as curator Henrietta Lockhart notes.

This strategy transforms Winterbourne from ‘just’ a historic house into a multifunctional site where history, learning, leisure, and community intersect. Its components now include:

A historic house museum
An art gallery
A teahouse
A large botanical garden
Public programmes and workshops
Event hire
A working letterpress printing workshop and typographic library
A second-hand bookshop
A university herbarium
An RHS training centre

The lesson is clear: vision must be matched with strategy. Long-term sustainability rests not only on organisational architecture — governance, funding, audience strategy, and operational scope — but also on the site’s distinctive assets: its collections, architecture, landscapes, and embedded stories. The task is to bring these elements into alignment: knowing your audience, defining your positioning, and designing programmes that grow organically from what the site uniquely offers. These are as essential to survival as any conservation plan.

Heritage Futures: Beyond Preservation

In a guest session with Matt Thompson, Conservation, Curatorial, and Learning Director at English Heritage, we were asked to confront a basic truth: nothing lasts forever. Buildings erode. Collections degrade. Funds are finite. If loss is inevitable, the real question is how we respond to that reality.

Some of the questions I continue to reflect on:

If history constantly accumulates, we will have more potential heritage tomorrow than we can ever conserve. What criteria will guide what we keep, adapt, or let go?

Should we try to arrest the process of change at a chosen moment, or accept change and document it, investing in records, oral histories, and accessible archives when fabric cannot be saved?
How do we design evidence-based interpretation without flattening complexity, welcoming multiple audience segments while staying intelligible and honest?
What does sustainability really mean when applied not just to energy and planting, but to meaning? How do we carry forward what matters without embalming it or reducing it to a static display?

Winterbourne’s approach feels both pragmatic and humane. It builds redundancy into meaning: the same place can be a home, a garden, a classroom, a workshop, a teahouse, a research site. If one function is constrained, others sustain the whole. It treats interpretation as light scaffolding that helps people make sense without prescribing how they must feel. It acknowledges that some ‘original’ elements are gone, and replaces the pursuit of fixity with transparency.

Closing Reflections

During my visits, especially behind the scenes in the stores and herbarium, I saw how heritage work is at once fragile and resilient. Fragile, because a stray light leak, a funding shortfall, or a policy swing can undo years of care. Resilient, because of the human meshwork — Henrietta Lockhart’s leadership, the staff’s craft, volunteers’ time, the University’s platform, members’ affection. Heritage is not safeguarded by ideology; it is sustained by relationships.

We ended our programme at the Lapworth Museum of Geology, surrounded by rocks that tell stories across deep time. You cannot preserve a rock formation ‘as it was’. You can only study, interpret, and live with its change. Winterbourne taught me to see cultural heritage the same way. The goal is not stasis. It is to carry forward meaning — carefully, creatively, and with the humility to accept that care sometimes looks like letting go.

If the future of heritage is to remain credible, it will depend less on freezing the past in place and more on hosting it — creating spaces where history continues to work in the present: as knowledge, as beauty, as practice, and as care.

Living with Heritage: