Anna Ridgeway, the Head of History in the Secondary Department of Saltus Grammar School, has set up a National Trust Club at school.Our theme for the year is ‘Connected Community,’ and so she thought it would be a good opportunity to connect the students with their historic community and to help the Bermuda National Trust with conservation work in their museums and historic properties.Mr Peter Frith, who is the Director of Museums for the Bermuda National Trust, gave us special permission to go into Tucker House in St George’s to help prepare and present it for the Christmas Walkabout. A group of five of us met up at 10am outside the house on Water Street on Saturday 19th November.Tucker House is an especially old house dating back to the 1750s and is full of beautiful pieces of furniture, glassware, silver and brass. Mr Frith said he would like us to polish all the brass and to clean around the outside of the property.Mrs Ridgeway used to be a Conservator for the National Trust in England and so she showed us how to professionally clean the brass without damaging the surface of the objects.We had to put on protective gloves so we didn’t get our hands covered in polish and dirt, which would then be transferred onto the object. We had to take a small amount of brass polish and slowly work it into the surface, so we were just lifting off the year’s worth of dirt, rather than damaging the metal itself.When we had done that, we had to take a different cloth and carefully remove the polish. It was amazing to see how much the brass had changed during the course of only a year the pieces looked so much better after we were done. We cleaned all of the brass work that sits around the fireplace in the living room and we polished all of the old candlesticks.Some pieces were very old and so we had to be extremely careful when handling them. They looked great when we had finished; you could really see the difference. We also helped to clean the woodwork and windowsills outside the house.The woodwork was filthy with dirt and dust, as the house is right on the roadside and often has traffic going past.First we used soft brushes to get off the worst of the dirt. They had to be soft so as not to damage the paint work. We then used very soft sponges and a minute amount of washing up liquid in a large bucket of water to wash off the remaining dirt. Mrs Ridgeway told us that certain chemicals can damage paint work. The windowsills were also very dirty and so we cleaned them down as well.We were in the property for about two hours and it was a really good experience. We got to do something young people in Bermuda would never normally have the chance to do and to help our community. Mr Frith said he was really pleased with the work we had done. Mrs Ridgeway took us all to Wahoo for ice-creams afterwards!The Club is going to run once a month on a Saturday morning. The plan is that all Middle Division students at Saltus will be given the opportunity to work on a variety of historic properties at some point during these years of school. It is voluntary, but loads of students have already signed up. I hope I have another opportunity to join in.