Stratford-upon-Avon
Decorative and Fine Arts Society

Heritage Volunteers

Two of our senior volunteers working on an altar frontal

Two of our senior volunteers, Julie Helps and Pam Forrester, working on an altar frontal from one of the local churches

NADFAS Heritage Volunteers help to conserve our heritage both in Britain and in parts of Europe.

Conservation and preservation of our heritage are tremendous burdens on the limited resources of museums, National Trust properties, historic houses, libraries and gardens. Volunteers help them in non-specialist but vital ways by caring for collections, recording documents, guiding and stewarding.

SADFAS plays an active role in the Stratford-upon-Avon region with Heritage Volunteers involved in a number of areas of conservation, museum and library work. Our highly skilled Textile Volunteers not only repair many precious ecclesiastical objects, such as banners, lectern hangings and altar frontals, but also make new ones for churches in the area. Recent projects include repair work for altar cloths for Sutton, a new pulpit fall for Leek Wooton and four lectern hangings for St. Mary's, Warwick. Work in hand includes new altar frontals for St. Mary's with many other projects in the pipeline.

The Textile Volunteers includes a team of skilled canvas workers who in the recent past took on the enormous task of designing and working 38 new chair covers for Coughton Court (see Picture Gallery). They are currently working on new kneelers for St. Mary's.

New pulpit fall for Leek Wooton Church

New pulpit fall, during work in progress, for Leek Wooton Church

Other Heritage Volunteers include our trained library workers who have worked in many prestigious libraries in the Warwickshire area over the years. At present our teams work behind the scenes at The Shakespeare Birthplace Trust where they assist in the conservation of reference books and the archive collection and in the Records Office where they compile data bases of many interesting artefacts held by the Trust.

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