From action man to history man
Mar 2 2009 by Karen Dent, The Journal
Lottery funding and a grant from English Heritage paid to fill the giant aeroplane hangars with ski slopes, cycle tracks, rifle ranges and climbing walls.
“It was bringing something the locals had forgotten about back into use and it is now probably the country’s leading outdoor activity centre and indoor centre as well as sailing school, so it was using the heritage.
“That really started me on the track of all things heritage, and using the heritage and making it work for both the visitor and for the owner.
“That is now if you like, my mantra, that’s what my business is. It’s not the heritage and the conservation, although obviously I’m associated with that, it’s making it work.
“If we don’t use it, we’ll lose it – it’s bound to happen. Look at all the derelict castles all the way around the region. If we don’t use them, they will just decay and we will lose them.”
Gibside attracted Walton home to his native North East in 1999, where his efforts helped boost visitor numbers from 26,000 a year to more than 108,000 within eight years.
“I did the big conservation project there, worked with them for eight/nine years and restored Gibside pretty much to the splendour that it used to be, within reason,” he says.
“I used every part of the estate slowly but surely and as I started to open it up, so the public came in. When I did the stables at Gibside, it was a fairly major project and there was one bank holiday weekend when we had the place totally shrouded in scaffolding inside and out .
“We had stripped everything out before we actually started the work. I thought there is a real opportunity here and with the support of the contractors – who were terribly nervous about it to start off with – I said ‘Look this weekend, I want to open this to the public, I want Joe Public climbing around your scaffolding’ – well you can imagine, they were just about wetting themselves!”
The scaffolding was made safe, the walkways were levelled and all visitors had to wear hard hats.
“And they came in droves! Eventually there were four of us giving tours and at the end of the weekend, we were absolutely knackered.”
From Gibside, he went on to another project close to his heart – the Grace Darling museum in Bamburgh. He was employed by the RNLI to relaunch the newly-designed venue after the original museum had been closed for two years.
His current summer project is staging events at Brinkburn Priory, ranging from organ recitals and Northumbrian pipes to children’s play The Mowgli Stories.
“It’s going to be absolutely fascinating because part of The Mowgli Stories are set in the jungle in an old temple – well here is beautiful Brinkburn Priory, set in the forest in Northumberland and what a fantastic setting for it.”
Heritage and the part it plays in drawing visitors to the region is now big business, especially in the current economic climate when the weak pound is predicted to attract more foreign as well as domestic tourists.
“Heritage is one of the fastest growing areas of national tourism in this country. People are just becoming aware of what is around them and they are actually just becoming aware since the current Northumbria Tourism team have been in post.
“In the last couple of years when we have been selling this ‘Passionate People Passionate Places’ with the adverts on television. They inspire you, they are absolutely stunning.”
But his career today is a far cry from his original hopes of becoming a farmer, an ambition that was quashed by his family.
“Isaac Walton – that was our family business. I was dragged into the family business. I didn’t want to – but I was dragged screaming. I endured it for 10 years or so.
“I left when there were too many family and not enough money, I just I walked away from the family bickering really. It was driving my father and I further and further apart.”
That was during the winter of discontent in 1973, when his job as a director forced him to make staff redundant.
“The miners were on strike, imagine the lights kept going off so we only had three days a week to trade. They were starting to build the Metro system, so there were these huge pallisades at either end of Grainger Street that stopped all vehicle traffic and put off pedestrian traffic, and they were also doing the foundations for Eldon Square.
“All this was going on in the city and it was that winter and the following two years of all this disruption that really sounded the death knell for the company.”
He believes the current economic climate, although threatening, is far less frightening than the recession of the ’70s.
“I don’t see it as being as bad as it was then,” he says. “What is different this time is the appalling behaviour of the bankers, a Government who seem to be struggling to find out what they really should do, and the pensioners who are relying a lot on their savings and seeing absolutely nothing for all their hard work.
“I do not believe it is as threatening as that winter of discontent; that was horrific, it really was.”
The Isaac Walton shop in Grainger Street finally closed in the late 1970s – and the site is now occupied by lingerie and erotica chain Ann Summers.
“Father would be spinning – Ann Summers!” chuckles Walton. “Every time I go past, I think, ‘Dad, don’t look down!’ It’s absolutely hilarious.”
CV
1965 to 1974 Personnel and services director of Isaac Walton’s department store group in Newcastle.
1974 to 1986 Manager with the John Lewis Partnership in Newcastle.
1986 to 1992 Field director and expedition leader for Operation Raleigh in the Pacific Rim.
1992 to 1996 General manager of Calshot Activities Centre based on the Solent.
1996 to 1997 Liaison officer for an agency of the Department for Education and Employment.ior school staff.
2007 to 2008 Established and openrf the new RNLI Grace Darling Museum in Bamburgh.
1997 to 1999 General manager for the Northumbria Churches Training Consortium.
1999 to 2007 Property and project manager for the National Trust at Gibside and three other Trust properties.
2008 to present Independent heritage consultant working on a number of projects, including Brinkburn Priory and the Belsay Trust.
THE QUESTIONNAIRE
What car do you drive?
Volvo estate V70
What's your favourite restaurant?
Basilica’s on Gosforth High Street.
Who or what makes you laugh?
The grandchildren make me laugh and As Time Goes By with Judi Dench creases me up
What's your favourite book?
My Early Life by Winston Churchill
What was the last album you bought?
And Winter Came - Enya
What's your ideal job, other than the one you've got?
I’ve always fancied being a ship’s captain and going into foreign ports. There is a new vista outside your window every morning.
If you had a talking parrot, what's the first thing you would teach it to say?
Gin and tonic!
What's your greatest fear?
Heights.
What's the best piece of business advice you have ever received?
Have faith in yourself
And the worst?
Don’t do it if it doesn’t make a profit
What's your poison?
Chilean red wine. I lived in Chile for three years and we used to buy a carboy – this huge glass vase – for £1.95. It lasted my headquarters three days before we had to replace it.
What newspapers do you read, other than The Journal?
The Weekend Telegraph
How much was your first pay packet and what was it for?
£2 and 10 shillings as a stock keeper in the shirt department in the basement of Isaac Walton.
How do you keep fit?
Walking the dogs and gardening
What's your most irritating habit?
Can I ask ‘her indoors?’
What's your biggest extravagance?
My dogs and the birds in the garden.
Which historical or fictional character do you most identify with or admire?
Wellington - astride his beloved Copenhagen!
Which four famous people would you most like to dine with?
Duke of Wellington, Winston Churchill, Emma Thompson and Meryl Streep
How would you like to be remembered?
I would like to think that people many think: “This wouldn’t have been here if he hadn’t opened it up and made it available.”
