There are many lightbulbs inside Nostell Priory. How many is a good guess – at least two hundred at the last count! Nostell is a very old house, which means that the electricity system and electric fittings in some of our objects are also fairly old. As a result, we normally have to change at least five or six light bulbs every week… until now! (More on that later).
Below are a few of the different types of lamps, lights and fittings that we have to change the bulbs in at Nostell.
Lamp in the Library. This is an altar candlestick in the 17th century style which has been converted to electricity.
Chandelier in the Billiard Room (with one lightbulb not working!) It’s an English gilt-metal and cut-glass four-light chandelier, dating from the second quarter of the 19th century. You can also see a spotlight which focuses on a painting hanging on the opposite side of the room.
Standard up-lighter lamp, used to lighten up some dark areas on the visitor route.
Changing the lightbulbs allows to see up close some of the fixtures and fittings of the lights at Nostell. Here is a frosted glass ‘flambeau shade’ from a Regency chandelier in the Top Hall.
Constantly changing lightbulbs can take up a lot of time (and money!) To combat this, we’re installing special new heritage LED lightbulbs in every fitting. These are designed to last at least ten years, which will be a great help to the team. We’ve spent a lot of time recently replacing every bulb, and have taken some photographs showing the all-important switch over from normal to LED bulbs!
Equipment ready! We did a lot of the changing of the bulbs in front of the public, so we could explain to them what we were doing.
We left our equipment out for people to have a look at, and put out an information sign so visitors could read about what was going on. Click on the image to get a closer look.
Left to right: ordinary bulb and LED heritage bulb.
Empty boxes and old lightbulbs! These will be recycled, and some will be kept as part of a new temporary exhibition.
Then we began the time-consuming process of changing the bulbs.
Starting off in the Top Hall
We have different LED bulbs for different light fittings. Frosted glass shades have 5 watt bulbs, clear glass shades will contain 4 watt bulbs, and candelabras and paper lamp shades will have 3 watt bulbs.
Not forgetting the candelabras!
The new LED bulbs are brighter than the old ones, and have so far proved very effective (meaning that we haven’t had to replace one yet). Here’s to the next ten years of not changing lightbulbs at Nostell!
Nostell’s House Team
Nostell Priory Conservation Blog 
Great to see these new LED lights with clear glass which look much better than the former frosted glass in an historic seeting. Any chance of replacing the frosted glass in the Riding House?
They do look much better, and are certainly saving us a lot of work at the moment. We’ll see what we can do with the Riding House!
I always have problems telling the difference between light bulbs and I always get confused! However, I visited Lights On Lights Off the other day and they provided extremely useful information on the difference between light bulbs. For anyone with the same rnage of knowledge as myself, here is the link to the page:
http://www.lightsonlightsoff.co.uk/faqs/questions-about-bulbs