Easter at Elizabeth Gaskell’s House

Easter at Elizabeth Gaskell's House at Elizabeth Gaskell’s House, Manchester, 3–17 April 2022, free entry - Visit now

Head to Elizabeth Gaskell’s House this April for some special family craft activities – including learning more about Victorian greetings cards and getting the chance to make your own Happy Easter card. This workshop takes place in the Servants’ Hall on 3, 6, 7, 13, 14 and 17 April, and is included in the admission price – while you’re there, you can also follow the popular Cranford the Cat trail round the house and even enjoy a picnic in the garden, if the weather permits.

Head to Elizabeth Gaskell’s House this April for some special family craft activities – including learning more about Victorian greetings cards and getting the chance to make your own Happy Easter card.

The Easter card activity is being run in partnership with Manchester Metropolitan University Special Collections Museum as part of a project to promote and celebrate its Laura Seddon Collection of Victorian and Edwardian greetings cards. One of the largest and most comprehensive sources for the study of 19th-century greetings cards, the Laura Seddon Collection contains over 32,500 examples, ranging in date from the 1840s to the 1920s, with the majority from the 1880s-1890s; the “Golden Age” of the greetings card. Some are very rare, some represent the earliest examples of commercial cards (including Britain’s first commercially produced Christmas card), and some were created by renowned 19th-century artists and illustrators including Walter Crane, Kate Greenaway and Beatrix Potter.

There are Christmas and Easter cards plus birthday, New Year, memorial, reward and Valentine’s cards, all collected by Laura Seddon, who donated her collection to the university in 1992. The collection can be viewed at the Reading Room of Special Collections Museum at Man Met’s All Saints Library – pre-booking is required if you fancy a walk up the road. Don’t forget to check out Manchester Poetry Library while you’re there.