![The National Trust spends £4,000 a year to look after the Bath Assembly Rooms' chandeliers](/https/www.telegraph.co.uk/content/dam/news/2024/07/13/TELEMMGLPICT000385432915_17208888916880_trans_NvBQzQNjv4BqyuLFFzXshuGqnr8zPdDWXkikPYR0xYwuEBLwP9UFqPg.jpeg?imwidth=680)
National Trust imposes chandelier ‘tax’ on Only Fools and Horses jokes
Visitors who quote from sitcom should donate something to look after lights, says charity
![The National Trust spends £4,000 a year to look after the Bath Assembly Rooms' chandeliers](/https/www.telegraph.co.uk/content/dam/news/2024/07/13/TELEMMGLPICT000385432915_17208888916880_trans_NvBQzQNjv4BqyuLFFzXshuGqnr8zPdDWXkikPYR0xYwuEBLwP9UFqPg.jpeg?imwidth=680)
A National Trust property which is having its chandeliers cleaned has imposed a “tax” for visitors who quote jokes from an Only Fools and Horses scene.
The Bath Assembly Rooms is bringing in contractors to deep clean the light fittings at the Somerset attraction but fear visitors will indulge in quoting the script from one of the BBC sitcom series which culminates in a chandelier crashing to the ground.
In the 1982 episode called A Touch of Glass, Del Boy and Rodney are commissioned by a member of the aristocracy to clean a Dorset mansion’s Louis XIV chandeliers.
As the hapless Peckham brothers braced themselves holding a sheet under one hallway chandelier, their grandad goes upstairs but unscrews the wrong one sending another chandelier smashing to the ground.
The episode, the first in the show’s history to attract more than 10 million viewers, featured Del Boy’s line to “Brace yourself, Rodney, brace yourself” and grandad’s warning “One more turn, Del” secure the series’ place in sitcom history.
But staff at Bath Assembly Rooms, which was once frequented by Jane Austen and Charles Dickens, are urging visitors to make a voluntary donation to help pay for the restoration for merely thinking about the scene.
‘Bit of fun’
“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,” Alana Wright, the experience and visitor manager for venue, told The Guardian newspaper, admitting it was just a “bit of fun”.
She added: “We have suggested that if they are even thinking about the comedy scene, they should donate something to help look after the chandeliers.”
The largest chandelier, hanging in the Great Octagon Room, weighs 440lb and is 10ft tall.
The National Trust spends £4,000 a year to look after the Bath building’s 10 chandeliers, which would have once been lit with tallow candles, then gas before electricity came along.
The use of voluntary donation points could even be introduced to cover restoration work at the charity’s 600 other chandeliers at country and stately homes across the country.
Instead of cleaners holding a sheet beneath the chandeliers, the trust uses a winch system to lower them from the ceiling.