Jane Turner and Anne Vardon, long-standing volunteers at Watts Gallery - Artists' Village reminisce about the restoration of Watts Gallery in 2011.

It came as no surprise to the (very few) volunteers around at the time when, in 2004, English Heritage declared the Gallery a ‘Building at Risk’. Rain was coming through the roof and down the walls, buckets were everywhere to catch the flood, the underfloor heating was failing, the collection was at risk.

The then curator, Richard Jefferies, was desperately trying to hold it all together, almost singlehanded. The Trustees had to decide: close the Gallery and disperse the collection to other national museums, or restore. It was not an easy choice but happily, they chose the latter. Action stations! A new post of Director was created and Perdita Hunt was appointed to oversee the project, which was called the Hope Appeal after Watts’s iconic painting Hope.

In 2006, the Gallery was selected to represent the South-East Region in the BBC Restoration Village programme. Full steam ahead to make sure the Gallery received all the support it could get. Emails and letters winged their way around the world, urging friends and relatives to vote for the Gallery. Boards and banners were erected in obscure places by daring volunteers, not least on a bridge over the A3 at dead of night! Leaflets were handed out at railway stations and supermarkets. Alas, although the Gallery won its region, it came second in the Final but the publicity it received was immeasurable, giving a huge boost to the Hope Appeal.

The Gallery closed in September 2008. The first job was to clear it – not just the collection which was a specialist task, but every cupboard, shelf, drawer, in all corners of every room.

A team of volunteers descended. Books came first. Trestle tables were set up. They were sorted into categories, wiped clean, put into cartons and labelled. Cupboards and drawers were prised open to reveal boxes with hidden treasures. One in particular caused excitement: buried under dusty tissue paper, a small crumpled red object was uncovered which turned out to be Watts’s skull cap – so familiar in his many self-portraits!

There were hiccups along the way. The first builder went bust after 6 months. It snowed. But with the help of a grant of £4.7m from the Heritage Lottery Fund, matched by generous donations and tireless fund-raising by Perdita Hunt and the development team, the goal was in sight.

Richard Jefferies retired and Mark Bills was appointed as Curator. The refreshed and restored Gallery was finally revealed – the historic galleries displaying hundreds of Watts’s paintings from his private collection, the transformed sculpture Gallery, and new space for temporary exhibitions. A triumph, achieved by volunteers, friends, patrons and staff, working to a common purpose. TRH The Prince of Wales and The Duchess of Cornwall, performed the official opening ceremony in June 2011, commenting that the work of volunteers, as with so many charities, had been central to the project. The dozens of volunteers gathered for the occasion were justifiably proud of the part they had played.