The Lanscroon Murals in Broomfield House before the fires. The staircase at the Beaumont Care Home in Southgate also has murals by the same artist.
The Broomfield House Trust is hoping to work with local artists, teachers and schoolchildren on a project that would promote a lifelong love of art and learning while at the same time contributing to the Trust's multipronged efforts to raise funds to restore Broomfield House.
The project would be be run along similar lines to Take One Picture, the annual countrywide scheme run by the National Gallery. Like the national scheme, it would focus on a particular work of art. For Take One Picture, the work chosen for 2017 was Rubens' A Roman Triumph; in the case of Broomfield House, the work of art would be the spectacular murals that once adorned the chief staircase.
The murals were painted in 1726 by the Flemish artist Gerard Lanscroon. Fortunately, after the 1984 fire it proved possible to salvage large portions of the murals and store them safely in purpose-built crates. Three years ago the crates were opened and their contents examined. Conservation experts declared that they were in remarkably good condition, much to the relief of members of the Broomfield House Trust, the organisation that was set up with the aim of working with Enfield Council, the Heritage Lottery Fund, conservation bodies and others in the hope of eventually restoring the House.
A trial restoration of three sections of the murals is being carried out by Arte Conservation Ltd and it is hoped to put them on display at the Dugdale Centre in May 2018 as part of an exhibition about Broomfield House and the restoration project.
Can you help? We're looking for teachers and artists interested in developing a project with us and local schools
Launched in 1995, Take One Picture is the National Gallery’s countrywide scheme for primary schools which aims to inspire a lifelong love of art and learning by promoting the role of visual arts within education.
www.nationalgallery.org.uk/learning/teachers-and-schools/take-one-picture
The scheme shows how schools can be involved in interpreting and developing art work and to explore techniques and ideas for using the visual arts as a resource for curriculum-based learning.
The Broomfield House Trust is very interested in encouraging and supporting the creation of a local programme along these lines with teachers or artists in connection with the Lanscroon Murals. We welcome any enquiries and interest.
Please feel free to get in touch with us at to discuss this. Please feel free to share this with anyone who may be interested.
We have a Facebook page, “Broomfield House and the Lanscroon Murals” and a more general website at www.broomfieldhouse.org, where there is more information.
The Broomfield House Trust is pursuing a number of initiatives aimed at obtaining funding from the Heritage Lottery Fund and from other sponsors, as well as from the general public. In addition to the Dugdale exhibition, they include creating an online repository of documentary and pictorial resources recording the history of the House and Park, as well as an oral history drawing on local people's memories of the House before the fires.