Visitor Services Manager
National Trust

Trevor P

00:00:03 Hi, I’m Trevor P. I’m the Visitor Services Manager for the National Trust at Clumber Park. Essentially, it’s about making sure that everybody who comes to Clumber Park has a really enjoyable time and a great experience while they’re at the property, but I get my hands into all sorts of things. We run a cycle hire here, lots and lots of varying events from small scale events through to concerts for over twelve thousand people, so quite a varied role. We have quite large visitor numbers, as well. We have something in the region of seven hundred and fifty thousand visitors which come into the property each year.

00:00:40 When I was fifteen/sixteen I sort of had a passion for art. I quite enjoyed drawing. I really enjoyed technical drawing, as well, precision drawing, and, combined with that, I was quite sciencey, so I did maths, physics, chemistry, and enjoyed them. I know it’s sad to say at times but, yes, that was who I was, that was what I enjoyed at the time. But as I sort of got more into it and more in depth into it, and went through university, I knew it wasn’t for me.

00:01:11 University life was quite strange. It was the first time I was away, certainly, from my mum and dad for any length of period, and you suddenly find all those things that were picked up by somebody else you’re having to do yourself, but at the same time you’re meeting new friends, they’re all in the same situation as you, and it’s a great social experience. You meet a real breadth of people that you could never sort of meet on your own doorstep, or in your own town or your own city. Certainly, it was my first experience of a lot of different cultures, and everything else, and I found that bit of it quite exciting.

00:01:49 I came out of university and I thought ‘What can I do now? I really don’t want to pursue this any further.’ Teaching was one option because I’ve always enjoyed, you know, chatting to people and working with kids and things like that. I just stumbled across this by chance, and it was one of those things, I guess, I came to the Trust for food really. I need money. I needed to eat. I needed clothes and that sort of thing. It was a basic necessity just to earn money. The more I stayed here, the more I found out about the Trust, I guess the more I grew to love the organisation, and, well, it grew from there basically, but I think that’s sort of, it has been a good choice.

00:02:33 I’ve worked at Clumber now for nineteen years in total, so you can tell that, okay, it took me a long time to actually decide what I wanted to do, but, once I’d decided, I’ve stuck with it. I’ve started off just seasonally, as I’ve said, doing admissions, work, cycle hire, and that sort of thing, and then gradually, three or four different roles later, I’m now Visitor Services Manager here.

00:02:57 It doesn’t look like it, I know, but I like to get off to the gym, so I go to the gym about three or four times a week, and I like watching and playing sport. I’ve been a keen footballer in the past. As the legs started to give up, I took up what I thought was the gentler game of cricket, but a couple of cracked ribs and a shattered finger later I’m just about giving up on it, I think.

00:03:24 In ten year’s time, I guess I’d like to be managing a Trust property somewhere. My legacy for Clumber, I’m not really sure what that legacy would be. I’d like to think that that would probably carry on in the staff and our attitude and our welcome towards visitors, and I’d like to think that I’ve been a small cog in that, and a very small cog in that, in actually making sure the Trust is about actually being forever for everyone, and that I hope would be in some way my legacy at this property

00:03:59 End