The Office of Parks, Recreation and Historic Preservation’s Environmental Protection Fund awarded a $30,500 grant to the Friends to restore the tiled walls and ceilings of 3 rooms of the kitchen and workroom suite and repaint ceilings. The Friends will need to match this $30,500.

This restoration will allow a more inclusive and essential story to be told of the kitchen as the heart of the mansion and how the estate’s 3 French chefs, kitchen staff and servants created and served gourmet, 12-course French cuisine in an enormous formal dining room, using 19th and 20th-century tools and technology, to high society guests.

As John Bute, the 8th Marquess of Bute and great-great-nephew of Gladys Phipps, said in his letter of support for this project, “Being able to see and understand how chefs in the past worked and the spaces they used is a profound experience.  Culinary history and arts are unique in the way it transcends in engaging the public in understanding the past and building a link between us and our ancestors.”

Click through the gallery below to see the current condition of the kitchen and the project’s progress.