Partnership planning with the National Trust

The JCH project team and colleagues from the National Trust and the University of Oxford outside St Luke's Chapel, Oxford

The beautiful light and stained glass windows of St Luke’s Chapel in Oxford were the setting for a coming-together of the Jewish Country Houses project team with our partner properties from the National Trust.

The National Trust has collaborated with the JCH project since its initial formative stages, with the aim of revealing shared Jewish histories across many of their UK sites, and establishing connections with the broader European Jewish context.

The discussion on October 11th focused on ideas and opportunities to further explore the Jewish stories behind such properties as Hughenden, Upton, Nymans, and Waddesdon, and enabled us to think more carefully how we can best support curators, site teams, and volunteers going forward. Much has already been achieved including training for volunteers, activities and exhibitions around the European Days of Jewish Heritage, and the launch of an online heritage route, but we are excited to go into the next phase of the partnership, which will see public engagement through a new mobile exhibition, projects around the Holocaust and Memory, a major publication, and new National Trust houses joining the initiative. We are also excited to be exploring new avenues, for example at Ightham Mote and Box Hill.