tangible and intangible heritage: charles paget wade and the creation of snowshill manor as a magical space

How, as heritage professionals, historians, and curators might we approach the hidden, the occluded, the ineffable, the intangible, and the forgotten? How can we use those ideas, narratives, and experiences to unlock the objects, collections, spaces, buildings, gardens, parklands, and landscapes we care for, and thereby create new means by which individuals and communities can connect with them in ways that go beyond the visual? How can we offer encounters that go beyond what Laurajane Smith has called “Authorised Heritage Discourse” (AHD)? This discourse, according to Smith, not only privileges the aesthetic and scientific value of heritage while masking the important cultural and political work that the heritage process does, but also overlooks its less tangible and more ephemeral aspects. One heritage property that pays attention to the less obvious aspects of heritage is Snowshill Manor in Gloucestershire, in the care of the National Trust.

The British Country House is, in many ways, increasingly a contested space where history and contemporary national politics sit uneasily together. One the one hand, these buildings and their surrounds and contents are seen by some commentators and visitors as the material and spatial epitome of unchanging "Britishness" or "Englishness" and tradition. On the other hand, however, the curators and academics who care for and study these places, as well as a sizeable and growing group of the audiences who experience and consume them, increasingly consider them as sites of multi-layered narratives. From this perspective, these places-which can therefore offer complex insights into the roles that houses and their inhabitants played on local, national, and global stagesfunction as locations of display, identity, and self-fashioning, not to mention as less tangible sites of faith, belief, and folklore.
As Head Curator of Europe' s largest heritage and conservation charity, the National Trust for Places of Historic Interest or Natural Beauty, I find myself in a unique position to explore how some of these narratives are emerging and play out at our properties across England, Wales, and Northern Ireland. In particular, I have become interested in the ways in which heritage sites engage histories, beliefs, and collections that are concerned with magic, esotericism, and folk belief. How, as heritage professionals, historians, and curators might we approach the hidden, the occluded, the ineffable, the intangible, and the forgotten? How can we use those ideas, narratives, and experiences to unlock the objects, collections, spaces, buildings, gardens, parklands, and landscapes we care for-and thereby create new means by which individuals and communities can connect with them in ways that go beyond the visual? How can we offer encounters that go beyond what Laurajane Smith has called "Authorised Heritage Discourse" (AHD)? This discourse, according to Smith, privileges "the innate aesthetic and scientific value and physicality of heritage" and not only "masks the real cultural and political work that the heritage process does" but also overlooks the less tangible and more ephemeral and occluded aspects of heritage (Smith 2006: 87). One such heritage property in the care of the National Trust is Snowshill Manor in Gloucestershire (

snowshill manor and charles paget wade
Snowshill is a sixteenth-century traditional Cotswold manor house, purchased by the architect, craftsman, collector, artist, and designer Charles Paget Wade  in 1919 and donated with all its contents to the Trust in 1951 when Wade moved permanently to the Caribbean island of St. Kitts. From 1907to 1911 Wade worked as assistant to Rodney Unwin in the architectural firm of Unwin and Parker, who were then building Hampstead Garden Suburb. In 1911 Wade resigned from the firm to concentrate on his art and illustration, and that same year inherited his father' s considerable stake in the family' s Caribbean shipping business, Sendall and Wade. He also came into a stake in the family sugar plantations, including the Woodley estate on St. Kitts, which his father Paget Augustus Wade had owned outright. This inheritance gave him a sizeable private income as well as forcing him to become actively involved in the family business. As slave holders, the Wades made several small, successful claims against the government when slavery was abolished in the British Empire and received £283 as compensation for eighteen enslaved people. 1 But their family interests in the St. Kitts estates had largely come about after the abolition of slavery in the British Empire (Hall et al. 2014: 45). The relationship of the Wade family to St. Kitts is complex, and Wade was himself of mixed heritage as his grandmother, Mary Jones (or James, 1817-1914) was a free woman of color from St. Kitts. Wade moved between England and St. Kitts all his life, and this global perspective as well as his love of beautifully crafted objects led to him amassing a huge, highly eclectic, and often esoteric collection of objects and items of dress from all over the world.
When Wade was conscripted into the First World War as a Sapper in the Royal Engineers, he was acutely traumatized by what he saw in France and used his painting and drawing to escape the horrors of war. Wade was still in France when he saw Snowshill Manor advertised for sale, and he bought the manor in 1919 despite its nearly derelict state. Wade set about restoring Snowshill and recreating it as a place in which he could live out his artistic dreams and fantasies. The garden, which Wade designed in collaboration with Arts and Crafts architect and designer Mackay Hugh Baillie Scott , whom he met at Parker and Unwin, was an extension of the house. The original garden plans also included the addition of a tower and cloisters, though these were never realized. Snowshill therefore became a place where Wade could be once more the author of his own destiny, surrounded by beautiful and fascinating things.
During the forty years in which he lived at Snowshill, Wade amassed a huge and eclectic collection of around twenty-two thousand objects, including antiques, curiosities, and one of the most important historic dress collections in the country. He acquired the dress collection, not merely to admire the skills of those who made the garments but for a practical use: to provide a rich source of fancy dress and costume for Wade and his friends during the many gatherings held at the manor house. Wade also took great pleasure in dressing up and inhabiting different personae even when he didn't have guests; the hobby offered him a freedom and playfulness that was not usual amongst most upperclass British men in the early to mid-twentieth century. Yet Snowshill was not conceived as a museum but as a fully immersive environment: a series of spaces, both interior and exterior, that function as deliberately staged backdrops for the eclectic collection that Wade both inherited and amassed and for the revels and pageantry that Wade and his guests played out in the house and gardens. Each room in the manor was given a "magical" or astrological name such as "Unicorn," "Dragon," "Seraphim," "Zenith," and the "Witches' Garrett." The atmosphere of the house was also maintained through the deliberately dim lighting that Wade installed. Moreover, Wade made much of the secret passages and entrances found throughout Snowshill Manor, reportedly using these extensively to sneak up on people while attired in full historical fancy dress, including the huge postillion boots he favored. This ability to creep around the already ancient and creaky property meant that, for his unsuspecting guests, Wade' s sudden appearance in full costume in the gloom of the manor often scared the living daylights out of them! No doubt he also took great mischievous pleasure in pretending to be an apparition. Rumor has it that Wade' s ghostly footsteps can still be heard echoing on the staircases and floors of Snowshill Manor.
The immersive experience that Wade created at Snowshill, made even more atmospheric by the deliberate lack of electric light, is concisely explained by Jonathan Howard (2016: 68-69): "For Charles, Snowshill was not a museum, but a living and expressive architectural backdrop. He was determined to use the space and collection to provoke dramatic responses, tell stories and draw one back in time. He despised predictability and used intrigue and mystery to fuel people' s desire to move through one space into another. He built galleries in Meridian and Dragon to give different perspectives on the rooms. Wherever possible in the house and gardens he tried to avoid uninterrupted vistas." The creation of Snowshill Manor as such an immersive and performative series of experiences was further heightened by the fact that Wade and his wife, Mary McEwan Gore Graham Wade , 2 did not actually live in the manor house but in the much smaller Priest's House adjacent to the main house. the witches' garrett Most rooms in the manor remain filled to the brim with intriguing objects and artifacts from multiple eras and places. Undoubtedly the most explicitly magical space is in the attic, a room which Wade called the "Witches' Garrett" although, from Wade' s notes, it seems he also sometimes referred to it as "The Alchemist' s Room." 3 The room is not currently open to the public and can be accessed only via a ladder leading up from a room known as the "Great Garrett" or "100 Wheels" directly below, which is filled to the rafters with all manner of contraptions with wheels. Quite astonishingly, but particularly surprising in an old English manor house, on entering this small attic space the visitor is confronted with an elaborate magic circle painted on the wooden floor; it is slightly scuffed and worn in places but still very much visible. The magic circle faces north and is largely done in black, apart from twelve crosses painted in red. The border of the circle contains some Latin text and eight crosses. At the center of the circle are the words ALPHA at the top and OMEGA at the bottom. These are interspersed with MICHAEL, accompanied by the warrior angel' s seal, and HELA, SADAY, and JOD with associated seals, also in red. These seals are now quite worn and indistinct but can be seen more clearly in a drawing from Wade' s notebooks ( fig. 2). The circle is based on that from the eighteenthcentury French manuscript No. 2344, the grimoire L'operation des sept esprits des planets from the occult collection of Marc Antoine René de Voyer, Marquis de Paulmy (1722-1787), now held in the Bibliothèque de l' Arsenal in Paris. This magic circle was published in 1931 as figure 77 in Witchcraft, Magic and Alchemy by the French translator and occultist Emile Grillot de Givry . It seems likely that Wade created the circle in the Witches' Garrett based on the image in Givry' s book, adding the four seals based on other designs in the book (de Givry 1931: 107).
On the rough plaster walls are painted both male and female mandrakes, believed to be based on woodcut illustrations in the 1485 medieval herbal the Gart der Gesundheit ("Garden of Health"). 4 The mandrakes, with their powerful associations of witchcraft, alchemy, and magic, in conjunction with the circle on the floor, give a suitably fantastical feel to the room. 5 The early woodcut-printed illustrative style of these murals also lends the room a sense of mystery and antiquity. Additionally, decorating the wall between the two mandrakes is a painting of Atlas (or possibly Hercules) holding the Globe as an armillary sphere, which is based on a woodcut illustration taken from the 1624 work Azoth, ou le moyen de faire l'or caché des philosophes, a seventeenth-century French alchemical text reportedly by one Frere Basile Valentin or Brother Basil Valentine. 6 Armillary spheres and astrolabes are a feature throughout Snowshill, as discussed below. Whether this room was ever used as a venue for ceremonial magic or witchcraft remains unclear, particularly given the intrinsically hidden nature of such practices. There are no reports or records of Wade as a practicing magician, although he did design his own Tarot based on the Marseille deck, something that members of magical societies (such as the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn) certainly did as part of their occult practice. We do know that Graham and Vivien Green, who had moved to Chipping Camden in 1931, visited the manor many times. Vivien believed that Charles was "inhuman, half goblin, half enchanter. He used to laugh to himself, rather disconcerting to a newcomer" (Howard 2016: 88-89).
Less impressed was Virginia Woolf, who complained in a "waspish" letter of July 1935 to her sister Vanessa Bell that that when she visited Snowshill in July 1935 "we went 40 miles to see a necromancer" (Bingham 2009: 182). What exactly Woolf meant by this is hard to tell, but it seems most likely that any visit to Wade was an extremely performative and purposefully antiquarian experience, something that the author might have found rather over the top. Woolf 's implication is probably not that Wade was a genuine magician or witch-even if he was, it is highly unlikely that she would have seen any evidence of him practicing-but that here was a man concerned more with what she might have regarded as the dead past than with the present. What does seem clear, however, is that the National Trust was completely unaware of the room when they were given the house in 1951, and it was only uncovered five years later in 1956.
According to Peter Hewitt, a folklore historian and former researcher at the Museum of Witchcraft and Magic (now in Boscastle, Cornwall) it was also in 1956 that Cecil Williamson, the Neopagan founder of the museum, visited Snowshill in order to examine the magical objects and texts found in the Witches' Garrett. Hewitt writes: "As is well known, the circumstances under which Williamson acquired the toad contraption and candle were dubious. Along with a series of other items, they were taken from Snowshill Manor in Gloucestershire in 1956. . . . Williamson was called in to inspect the occult material found there which included alchemical paraphernalia, materia medica, symbols inscribed in red paint upon the floor and various other pieces" (Hewitt 2017: 51).
Our understanding of the contents of the room is based on two main sources. The first is a photograph of the Witches' Garrett taken in 1956 but prior to Cecil Williamson' s acquisition of several of its objects for his own witchcraft museum, which, at that time, was at Bourton-on-the-Water in Gloucestershire and thus relatively close to Snowshill. This photo is available online on the National Trust Art and Collections website (object number 1337602). The second is Wade' s handwritten and sketched inventory of the room' s contents. Journalist Mark Hewitt describes the room thus: "This room, measuring roughly 6ft wide by 10ft long and with a steeply pitched roof, housed a group of over 70 objects all of which Wade carefully catalogued. These objects included two cauldrons, a brazier, and several types of rustic 'Nevis' stoneware from St Kitts as well as other jars and bottles. Various animal skulls and bones are mentioned as well as stuffed animals, an incense burner and the mummified remains of the left hand of an Egyptian. . . . Both zodiacal and regular globes are also a feature. There are however, two items which stand out, namely a print of Mother Shipton and a version of the famous 'Hand of Glory' catalogued as the 'Wondrous Candle'" (Hewitt, n.d.).
A cursory glance at the photograph and at Wade's inventory with its sketches also reveals many additional objects, including human skulls, "two friction electrical machines," a "17th century spice cupboard," several bird bills, "two tortoises," a frog, and a number of strange-looking dried fish. Given the considered assembly of the semi-macabre remains of humans and creatures, the early electrostatic generators, cauldrons, what look to be vessels and equipment possibly used for alchemy and/or chemistry, as well as a number of other curious objects in the room, it is perhaps not surprising that Wade gave at least the appearance of a magician, alchemist, or necromancer. The spectral collection of costumes and accessories, suits of Samurai armor ( fig. 2), and various automata, not to mention the extensive model village and harbor "Wolf Cove" that Wade created in the gardens, can also have only given the impression of an array of items all waiting patiently for a magician to animate them with life.
Some of the objects that found their way into the collection of the Museum of Witchcraft and Magic, including a chest seen in a 1956 photograph, were unfortunately damaged beyond repair in the terrible Boscastle flood of 2004. Others do survive, however, including the "Hanging Device with Toad" (possibly a device for operating a form of West Country toad magic) and the "Wondrous Candle," which does indeed seem to be a variant of the "Hand of Glory." This object is also recorded in Wade' s own notebook accompanied by a drawing of the "Wondrous Candle" with a long quotation from the Secrets merveilleux de la magie naturelle et cabalistique du Petit Albert, the well-known eighteenthcentury grimoire of natural and cabbalistic magic (Lucius 1706: n.p.). A "Hand of Glory" is a candle made from the human tallow of a hanged murderer attached to a dried, pickled, hand taken from the corpse of the same executed killer and thought to aid burglars by sending their victims into a deep sleep. 7 The Snowshill version, however, looks to be sat in a forked hazel wood stick, although as of 2017 the candle had not been tested to see if it was actually made from human tallow. As Peter Hewitt notes, Williamson reimagined the candle as a "Moth Spirit Trap," which he claimed to have collected from an Okehampton Witch called Hilda Freeman. Hewitt also states that the Dag or Dagaz rune was probably added by Williamson in place of three crosses that appear on the device in a rough sketch by Williamson (Hewitt 2017). But the sketch in Wade' s inventory notebook clearly depicts the rune rather than the crosses, so the error may lie in Williamson' s sketch. Mark Hewitt, meanwhile, believes that the "Wondrous Candle" may well have been made by Wade himself, as he was a very proficient craftsman (Hewitt, n.d.). Photographs of both objects as they look today can be found on the website of the Museum of Witchcraft and Magic. 8 The Witches' Garrett was clearly conceived by Wade as a highly performative magical space, in which he juxtaposes the high ceremonial magic of the circle and the classical alchemical herbal magic of the mandrakes with the folk magic of the "Wondrous Candle" and the hanging-toad device and the remains of humans and creatures that hint at magical dealings with the dead. A few of these traditional folk magical objects still remain in the collection, including two witches' bottles filled with thread designed to entangle and confuse malicious spirits. It is not clear, however, whether these came from the Witches' Garrett or were displayed elsewhere.
There are undeniable other magical objects elsewhere in the collection, including a number of reliquaries, such as a striking sixteenth-century Spanish reliquary depicting St. Ignatius of Loyola, a significant collection of Balinese and other masks, and an extraordinary "Siamese Hat" with inscribed sacred geometry on the underside, highly reminiscent of the intricate details of Sak yant, the magical form of protective tattooing still practiced today by Thai monks.
In his notebook Wade refers to the hat as "Seraphim 266. Circular Hat of Siamese Magician gold lacquer on a plaited palm foundation, decorated with raised designs in gesso, under side of black lacquer, with magic squares & circles inscribed with symbols 4 Squares 4 Circles, with ciphyrs between each." The entry also includes a sketch with dimensions (Wade, n.d.: 56). It is possible that this hat belonged to a mo phi or shaman who practiced the Thai animist folk religion Satsana Phi, but this object still needs further research. Cecil Williamson also claimed that there were Obeah symbols in the room, but I have yet to see any definitive evidence of this. Obeah is a traditional belief system practiced in a number of former British colonies in the Caribbean, including St. Kitts, where Wade may well have encountered it. 9 But the curious and magical drama of Wade' s room was lost in 1956 and is hinted at only in the aforementioned photograph as well as in an undated sketch from Wade' s notebook titled the "Alchemist' s Room," which relegates Wade' s magic circle to a much smaller space on the floor. a place outside of time Wade was clearly fascinated by cyclical and non-linear measures of time, including astronomy and astrology, two fields that were inextricably intertwined before modern science distinguished between them in the Early Modern period. I would contend that Wade envisioned and ultimately realized Snowshill Manor as a place that deliberately stood outside of linear time and instead inhabited something far more ambiguous. To return to Virginia Woolf ' s 1935 visit to Snowshill Manor, it is likely that part of her disgruntlement with Wade stemmed from missing her train home. As Jonathan Howard writes in Charles Paget Wade' s entry in the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography: "In 1935 John Buchan drove Virginia Woolf forty miles to see Snowshill, as he felt that one could not visit anywhere more unusual. She later complained that she had missed her train because Wade could not tell her the time accurately; although he had more than a hundred timepieces they were all set to different times so that they could be heard to chime and strike individually" (Howard 2008: n.p.).
This encounter, which proved so annoying for Woolf, shows Wade' s deliberate evasion of the confines of linear time at Snowshill, and a conscious construction of space, or series of spaces, in the house and garden that could stand outside of time and function separately from the outside world. The refusal to reference the "correct" time seems to be part of this. Instead of merely functioning as devices by which to tell the hour, Snowshill' s mass of timepieces and clocks -not to mention the dollhouse clocks, clock parts, clockwork objects, and clock drawings-not only became valued for the craftmanship that made them and their aesthetic qualities but also became an active way of disrupting the order of time itself: a deliberate mass confusion of ticks and chimes. No wonder, then, that Woolf missed her train. Railways are a mode of transport entirely predicated on order and timetables, and, as eloquently discussed by historian E. P. Thompson, they were one of the major drivers behind regularizing time across Britain during the nineteenth century (Thompson 1967: 56-97). As Woolf ' s experience demonstrates, the inability to tell the time correctly immediately rendered null and void the "progress" and freedom offered by the railways.
It is not only the refusal to embrace regulated forms of time that marked out Wade' s attitude towards time and progress. We can also see his enduring fascination with the medieval and early modern correspondences between astronomy and astrology. Peppered abundantly throughout Snowshill Manor and its grounds and gardens are armillary spheres or astrolabes along with astrological imagery, including Wade' s own natal astrological chart, beautifully and intricately carved into the flagstones of the terrace that sits above the main garden.
We also see this fascination with astrology outside in the Well Court through Wade' s design for his "Nychthemeron" (Greek for "Night and Day"), fashioned by the famous Arts and Crafts designer George Hart of Chipping Campden ( fig. 3). This 24-hour clock, painted "Wade Blue," features astrological symbols as well as inscriptions from the teachings of St. Bernard of Clairvaux, and is featured on pages 111 and 112 of Wade' s notebook. He also includes various sketches of the mechanisms and the quotes on the shutters. wade as "magician" The Tarot deck that Wade designed was, as mentioned previously, based on the Tarot de Marseille. 10 If he actually produced a deck of cards, it does not survive, but the drawings do, as do the larger versions made as part of the Unicorn clock Wade designed for the turret clock in the "Unicorn" room. Wade used the Major Arcana cards of the Marseille deck, with their decidedly woodblock designs, as his source. His choice to use the Tarot at all in this design seems significant; given that the Tarot is not only the preeminent modern occultist mode of divination, but that it also offers powerful symbolism of the psychological and spiritual exploration of life, it is hard not to conclude that Wade felt some resonance with its imagery.
It might also not be too far-fetched to speculate that the journey of the wideeyed and fearless Fool (#0) through to The World (#22) might also have rung true for a man who had begun his journey as an idealistic Arts and Crafts architect, had quite literally experienced trump card #13, Death, in France during the war, and had artfully created his own world at Snowshill. One of the most powerful images in the Major Arcana of the Tarot is, of course, trump #1, The Magician, in which a male figure stands at a table upon which lie the tools of his trade. In the Marseille Tarot the Magician has the slight feel of a trickster, as it is hard to tell whether he is a stage magician or a true practitioner of the arts. Wade' s is a pared down version of the Marseille image; his Magician has long, dark, wavy hair, in contrast to the blonde curls of the Marseille Magician, suggesting that Wade has depicted himself ( fig. 4). References to mage, shamans, and alchemists appear elsewhere in the house, not only with the Thai shaman' s hat already mentioned and a comical little drawing of a magician with a spell book but also with the two wonderful painted wooden panels titled "The Alchemist" displayed above the fireplace (the crucible of the room) in "Zenith." Clearly, even if Wade was not a practicing occultist, he was the mage of time and space in the realm of Snowshill. Wade' s collecting, creation, and commissioning of occult and magical objects feels like a rebellion against the relentless drive of modernity as epitomized by the war he saw and survived. Given Wade' s conscious positioning of himself in this guise of mage or alchemist, and the seeming willingness of visitors such as Virginia Woolf to embrace his consciously magical persona, it feels like a useful description of a man who lost control of his destiny on the battlefields of France and consequently spent the rest of his life attempting to create his own enchanted world in this ancient Cotswold Manor House. it possible to capture the kind of playful, immersive, magical atmosphere that a visit to Wade and his home must have been? Is that even possible to do so, with the creator of that world now gone? Also, although it is Wade' s powerful legacy that shaped Snowshill as we see it today, the property had a long history before Wade purchased and restored it just over 100 years ago. Should those histories be part of the story told there, particularly if we can connect them to some of the narratives of magic? For instance, the space known as "Ann' s Room" is said to be haunted. The room is named for 16-year-old Ann Parsons, who was both an orphan and an heiress. Legend has it that in 1604 she eloped to the Manor, which was the house of her close relations John and Thomas Warne, with her lover Anthony Palmer, and that they were quickly married there by a local vicar. But the secret lovers were caught by Ann' s guardian and tried by the Star Chamber (an English court at Westminster), although the outcome of the trial is unclear. This story must have also fascinated Wade, as he drew it into his own now magical mythos. Apparently, he sent the wood from a beam in the room to a renowned medium who, according to Wade, had "never heard of Snowshill." On examining the timber, she describes her impression: "tis late at night, in it a girl in a green dress of the 17th century, much agitated, paces up and down. She does not live there and will not stay the night." Wade claimed that it was only some years later that he saw the papers describing the Star Chamber' s case relating to the secret marriage of Ann Parsons (Haughton 2010).
True or not, it is a great yarn, but there are other ghosts allegedly haunting Snowshill, such as those in the "Zenith" room, site of a bloody duel. Other specters include a Benedictine monk from the time when Snowshill was part of Winchcombe Abbey, and Charles Marshall, who lived at the Manor in the first half of the nineteenth century and whose ghost apparently led his widow to a buried fortune that allowed her to update the house. These ghosts also hint at the overlooked nature of the Manor's longer history as part of the unique Cotswolds cultural landscape, its time as part of the lands of the Church, its previous residents and workers, and its connection to the myths and stories of its environs. 11 Can those connections be recovered, just as the National Trust is recovering the secrets of these spaces and collections? How do you approach presenting the uncanny and the spiritual in heritage (particularly objects with global histories) without making them seem hammy, offensive, or othering? Currently, this is done at Snowshill through following the blueprint of Wade's eclecticism, including his juxtaposition of objects, and by purposely displaying collections en masse, using low lighting and dramatic staging. Sometimes this works beautifully, as in the bedroom of the Priest's House, where the eclectic mix of objects seems to particularly characterize Wade's love of the fantastical, the strange, and the ancient. In other instances, such as the room full of Samurai armor, the current staging is less successful, with these wonderful Japanese objects relegated to the realm of "spookiness" rather than celebrated for their magnificent craftmanship and fearsome aspect.
conclusion In 2021 the National Trust is working to finalize the new significance frameworks that will help guide curators, conservators, and property teams as to the relative importance of the objects and buildings we care for and that will inform the prioritization of special care and conservation where needed. Alongside the tangible ways of judging the local, regional, national, and global significance of these objects and buildings, the finalized frameworks will also explore less tangible ways of understanding significance such as community and belief. But there is still much to be explored in terms of the less concrete aspects of the histories of our places and collections, and the question persists: How do we conceptualize and express the often vital and fascinating histories of the spaces in between, of myths, legends, stories, hauntings, oral traditions, and hidden and transient meanings and events? How can affect, the ephemeral and individual experience, ever be captured in heritage spaces, and how can lost or fleeting fantasy and magic be brought to life again? How can those of us who now care for and conserve the spaces and artifacts of magical beliefs ever fully understand or charge them again without the relevant secret knowledge or initiation of those that commissioned or made them? In many ways, then, this article, which is really an initial set of speculations and sometimes tangled thoughts, much like the threads of the witches' bottles in the collection at Snowshill, cannot yet answer all the questions it asks. It is, perhaps, best conceived as the first unknowing steps of the Fool' s Journey. But at its heart it is also a celebration of a fascinating man whose spirit can still be found animating the rooms, corridors, and secret spaces of Snowshill Manor.
sally-anne huxtable has been Head Curator of the National Trust since July 2019. She was formerly Principal Curator of Modern and Contemporary Design and National Museums Scotland, where she curated the permanent gallery Design for Living, 1851-1951. She has also undertaken work for a number of museums and galleries including the Tate and the Museo de Arte de Ponce, Puerto Rico, and is a Research Fellow in Art History at the University of York. notes 1. University College London 2021, entries for Solomon Abraham Wade: https://www. ucl.ac.uk/lbs/person/view/26074 and Frances Wade (née Paget): https://www.ucl.ac.uk/ lbs/person/view/26072.
2. Mary and Charles met when she wandered into his garden. They married in 1946, when he was 63 and she was 44. Mary was clearly less enamored of the privations of Snowshill than her husband, and increasingly the couple spent much of their time in St. Kitts, where they eventually moved permanently in 1951, when Charles handed over the property over to the National Trust.
3. Wade' s notebooks are unpublished and held in Gloucestershire Archives, D10423. 4. The Gart der Gesundheit of 1485 by Johannes de Cuba ( Johann Wonnecke von Kaub), a compendium of drugs deriving from the herbal, animal, and mineral kingdoms, was one of the first herbals to be printed in German. It is based on a number of earlier Latin texts, including the twelfth-century Physica of Hildegard of Bingen.
5. Mandrakes are the roots of plants of the genus Mandragora found in Mediterranean or the English mandrake Bryonia alba. The combination of these plants' hallucinogenic qualities and the resemblance of their roots to human forms guaranteed their enduring use and popularity in folk magic, including as a key ingredient in the famed "flying ointments" of witches. The plant is also mentioned in the Old Testament as a powerful aid to fertility (Gen 30:14, 16; Song 7:13), and it was used in ancient Greece to induce sleep, as well as being closely associated with both Circe and Hekate. It was believed that the mandrake could take both male and female form, and the death-inducing scream supposedly elicited from the root when pulled from the earth led to all manner of complex instructions about how to gather the plant. Some scholars also claimed that the bodily fluids of hanged corpses dripping on the ground generated mandrakes. The close resemblance of the mandrake root to the homunculus (the little man in the bottle created through alchemy) led to its enduring association with the transcendental power of the Great Work, a spiritual path that, according to Hermeticism, would lead to the mystical union of the self and the divine.
6. Basil Valentine, supposedly a fifteenth-century alchemist monk, was almost certainly the pseudonym of a number of sixteenth-century German alchemical writers.
7. The only Hand of Glory known to survive is in the collections of the Whitby Museum in North Yorkshire. See https://whitbymuseum.org.uk/whats-here/collections/ special-collections/hand-of-glory/.