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The Nude in the Attic

The revealing statue of a Georgian high-society mistress has her beauty restored at Knole House in Kent, and Townend, a traditional Lake District farmhouse, undergoes a makeover.

The compelling and sometimes scandalous family stories behind two very different National Trust houses are revealed.

In Knole House, the sprawling Tudor ancestral seat of the Sackville family, a life-size nude statue of 18th-century ballet dancer Giovana Zanerini, commissioned by her lover John Frederick, is being conserved to slow the aging process and restore her legendary looks. Two other heirlooms at Knole - a set of 400-year-old rolled-up animal skin parchments - are so delicate that they haven’t been unrolled for many years.

At the traditional Lake District farmhouse Townend, a key part of the archive of the Browne family of yeoman farmers - a bound volume of 18th-century letters - is being conserved using traditional book-binding skills, and scientific paint analysis has revealed the house's original Victorian paint scheme.

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58 minutes

Audio described

Credits

Role Contributor
Director Olly Rose
Producer Olly Rose
Director Sam Roubicek
Producer Sam Roubicek
Producer Gemma Duncan
Producer Corinna Gallop
Line Producer Laura Miller
Assistant Producer Millie Dobres
Production Manager Nancy Gladwin
Editor David Thompson
Series Editor Alex Raw
Executive Producer Sacha Baveystock
Executive Producer Sarah Spencer
Production Company Blast! Films

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