Visitors who make jokes about chandeliers falling down when they are being maintained at National Trust properties a
re being encouraged to pay a “tax” to help with their upkeep.
Such a moment was made famous in the TV comedy Only Fools And Horses when lead characters Del Boy and his brother Rodney stand on ladders waiting to catch a chandelier in a sheet so they can clean it.
In the classic scene in a hallway, Del Boy says: “Brace yourself Rodney, brace yourself”, as the pair wait for Grandad to release a fastening in the floorboards above, saying: “One more turn Del.”
But Grandad unscrews a different fastening, which sends another chandelier plunging to the ground just metres away from the duo instead, in the 1982 episode A Touch Of Glass.
Now conservators cleaning chandeliers at the Bath Assembly Rooms have heard people quote those well-known lines so many times that they have imposed a “tax” on any visitor who reminds them of the moment – or even thinks about it.
Anyone repeating “One more turn Del” or “Brace yourself Rodney, brace yourself” during the cleaning process at the Grade I listed building is being encouraged to pay a voluntary donation to the chandeliers’ conservation.
Alana Wright, the experience and visitor manager for the assembly rooms, told The Guardian: “We hear it all the time so we’ve set up a tap-to-donate point where they can make a payment towards our work.
“We have suggested that if they are even thinking about the comedy scene, they should donate something to help look after the chandeliers.”
Unlike in Only Fools And Horses, the National Trust has a winch system to lower them slowly and carefully to floor level for cleaning.
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Across the trust, there are more than 600 chandeliers and the visitor “tax” is to be extended to those country homes when cleaning takes place, reported the publication’s website.
There are 10 chandeliers at the Bath Assembly Rooms, costing a total of £4,000 a year to maintain, and they are now set to undergo a full conservation including rewiring.
Designed by John Wood the Younger and completed in 1771, the rooms were at the heart of fashionable Georgian society.
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They provided a place for people to meet and enjoy daily entertainments including balls, concerts, teas and gambling.
‘Polite society’ flocked to the venue, including the novelists Jane Austen and Charles Dickens, and the painter Thomas Gainsborough, said the trust.