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The Shops at Culzean
 Linda
O'Brien took charge of retail operations at Culzean Castle and
Country Park 10 years ago after 10 years experience in retail
management with Safeways. She originally studied Art and Design and
although at first glance that seems a big difference between art and
design and the retail world one only has to look at the shop
displays and layouts at Culzean to see that her talent in art and
design is being put to good use. Although building on her
experiences at Safeways, Linda told me that working at Culzean has
been very different both from a management and artistic point of
view. During her time at Culzean, she has overseen a considerable
amount of change in its retail activities.
When she first arrived, the only shop was situated in the castle
kitchen, and it was not long before she moved the shop to the coach
house, opposite the castle, allowing the kitchen to be restored into
its current splendour as the Victorian kitchen. The next move was
out of the coach house and up to the Country Park shop, a short way
down the path from home farm, where the major problem was that none
of visitors could find it! It then moved into one of the buildings
around the home farm courtyard, opposite the information Centre. A
second shop was opened in its current position near the castle. A
few years ago the kiosk near the ruined arch was converted into
Candies@Culzean specialising in a wonderful range of traditional
candies, boiled sweets, flavoured liquorices and other classic
traditional sweets to, very successfully, entice visitors, young and
old alike, into sampling its delicious treats.
Candies@Culzean have an increasing range of products with their
own labelling and adorned with
an image of the castle, making them an even more attractive and
relevant gift. Just recently, the shop at home farm has moved into
the information area with far more space, a bright glass frontage,
and has incorporated the information Centre and NTS subscriptions
into the shop's activities. The exhibition upstairs, and the
auditorium are of course still fully operational. The vacated area
has become a food shop specialising in a wonderful range of quality
produce with a particular emphasis on Ayrshire products including
for example, Arran dairy products and beers and Dunlop cheeses.
 Linda
has a constant eye to the future and likes to excite both new and
regular visitors with new products and changes to the shop layouts.
Ready for next Easter, Linda is moving the food displays into the
main shop in the visitor centre and is converting the current food
shop into a traditional toy shop packed with all the wonderful toys
us slightly older generation, and those even older, used to play
with. There will be lots of lovely wooden toys, kites, puppets (do
you remember Sooty and Sweep?), and traditional things like hoops
and skipping ropes and no... not a "Game Boy" in sight!
 Linda
pointed out that it was in September that she made the bulk of her
Christmas sales. However, the shop is fully stocked and is open
every Thursday, Friday, Saturday and Sunday until the 17th of
December from 11 o'clock in the morning to four o'clock in the
evening. The shop will reopen on the 11th of January. The home farm
restaurant is also open at the same times. Why not come along to
Victorian Christmas at Culzean on Sundays the 3rd and 10th December
and do some Christmas shopping at the same time?
A superb idea that would keep friends and family happily occupied
throughout the Christmas period would be to invest in the new
National Trust for Scotland game called Quest. This is the NTS
version of the Scottish Quest game that has sold over 10,000 copies.
Selling at £37.50p, it is competitively priced against other quality
games such as
 Trivial
Pursuit and Monopoly. The game incorporates 2400 questions of which
over a thousand relate in some way to NTS properties. There are
multichoice answers should you choose and an excellent booklet that
gives you more information about the answers to each of the
questions. The object of the game is to travel round Scotland in
search of the five letters QUEST and to return them to the NTS
headquarters in Charlotte Square, Edinburgh. On the way you must
answer questions, and gather money so you can buy your ferry tickets
and plane tickets to continue your travels. This is a really
excellent game, and is for 2 to 6 players, aged 14 and above. Why
not pop into the shop and have a look?
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