Visitor Assistant

• Title
• Visitor Assistant
• Location
• Cliffords Tower, York, North Yorkshire, YO1 9SA
• Salary
• £12.39 per hour / 27 hours per week April to October, 0 to 7 hours November to March / Permanent. *All salaries will increase following the NLW rise on 1st April 2026 to a minimum of £12.71 per hour*
• Job type
• Permanent
• Ref
• 16307

Would you like to work for the charity that cares for hundreds of historic sites in every corner of England? We are looking for a Visitor Assistant to join us at Clifford's Tower. We have a range of different contracts available from zero to 27 hours per week summer time (April - October) and zero to 7 hours per week winter (November to March)

No history background? No problem. What is important to us is a passion for people and excellent customer service. You will enjoy working with others as part of a team and understand what makes excellent customer service to deliver an engaging visitor experience to a diverse audience.

Heritage is for everybody, and we are here for heritage.

Heritage lives in places and people, memories and stories, artefacts and traditions. It can connect us all to the past, and to each other. It can make us happier, strengthen every community, and help shape society for the better. Everybody should be able to enjoy the benefits it brings. That's why, as a charity, we care for over a million objects and hundreds of historic sites in every part of England, from international icons to local treasures. And it's why we open them up, share their stories and find new ways for everybody to enjoy, learn, play and create.

Clifford's Tower is one of York's premier visitor attractions and welcomes in excess of 200,000 visitors a year. Following a multi-million pound conservation and re-interpretation project, Clifford's Tower opened to the public in spring 2022 and was hugely successful from day one. The investment in the property transformed the visitor experience and provided new opportunities to develop income streams. We aim to add to our team to further the positive experience that inspires visitors, promotes community involvement and provides a healthy financial return to conserve England's heritage for the future.

As a Visitor Assistant you will be the face of Clifford's Tower and play a huge role in the running of the site. You will be hands-on in engaging with our members, visitors, volunteers and stakeholders, helping create great experiences for people from the moment they arrive to when we say goodbye. All our sites are unique with a story to tell and we want to inspire visitors to enjoy every bit of their time with us.

Membership is incredibly important to English Heritage. As our single biggest source of income, membership underpins almost everything we do.

Asking people to join English Heritage is about more than raising money - it's about being proud of what we do with it. As a charity, we bring the story of England to life for millions of people at hundreds of historic sites, and we protect our heritage for future generations to enjoy. Our Members can explore thousands of years of history in hundreds of different ways. It's no wonder that our Members so often become our biggest advocates and our strongest supporters. As a Visitor Assistant, a large part of your role will be to upgrade our paying visitors to memberships, showing visitors the benefits of membership and matching the benefits to their needs.

Daily tasks will vary but a core part of your role will be to ensure the site is safe and presentable to enable warm welcomes and great experiences for all; you will find yourself working on admissions (selling and checking tickets), retail including sales and stock, membership promotion and sales, helping visitors find their way and make the most of the site, managing queues and doing general cleaning duties Finally, you will need to enjoy working outdoors in all weathers in an iconic heritage attraction.

For the right candidate working at Clifford's Tower there will also be the exciting opportunity to work at the York Cold War Bunker in Acomb, York.

The York Cold War Bunker is the former headquarters of the 20 Group of Royal Observer Corps, a key part in Britain's civil defence in the case of a nuclear war.

In addition to the previous tasks mentioned, in this role you would be providing high quality guided tours to this chilling site to the public, delivering education visits for school groups and would be expected to help in the protection, conservation and maintenance of the sites collection.

Full training in delivering the tours would be given, but our stance is interpretation not repetition so you would be encouraged to research and personalise your tour to fit your delivery.

Benefits include:

- Comprehensive training

- The opportunity for career progression within the heritage sector in retail, food and beverage or general management

- Apprenticeship opportunities

- Opportunities to go to some of our great live music and history events

- Free access to all English Heritage sites for you, and up to 6 friends and / or family members

- 25% discount in our shops and cafes

- Enhanced maternity/paternity/shared parental leave

- 25 days' holiday plus Bank Holidays pro rata rising to 28 days after 3 years

- Options to buy additional leave

- Matched pension contributions up to a maximum of 10%

To find out more about us and what we do, please register via one of the links below join us at one of our webinars.

Friday 23rd January 2026 11.30am-12.30pm

https://events.teams.microsoft.com/event/3ac4acf3-1db2-40d8-a81b-5c178615e5e6@30116e44-4d79-44c0-a8c1-ebc0707da3c9

Wednesday 4th February 2026 6-7pm

https://events.teams.microsoft.com/event/ea661ca0-f117-46dd-8c83-af63e055008a@30116e44-4d79-44c0-a8c1-ebc0707da3c9

You can also find out more about us here: https://www.english-heritage.org.uk/about/ and meet some of our people and hear about why they enjoy working with us: https://www.english-heritage.org.uk/about/our-people/careers-with-us/

Everybody's welcome at English Heritage

Forget the stereotypes. It takes thousands of people from every background to care for England's heritage and open it up for everybody to enjoy. We're looking for every type of person with every kind of skill and experience, and we're committed to making sure that English Heritage is an equitable, diverse and inclusive place to work. You can connect with others through our EDI networks as a member or ally. These include Ethnic Diversity, Faith & Belief, Social Equity, LGBTQ+, Neurodivergence, Age, Disability and Gender Health and Wellbeing.

We take wellbeing seriously. We are committed to ensuring everyone feels safe at work and can carry out their role. To support this, we have a network of Mental Health First aiders, regular information and awareness events, unlimited access to an Employee Assistance Programme and work with our people to implement reasonable adjustments.

If you would like to talk to us before you apply e.g. about workplace adjustments or working patterns, please contact Julie Brookes, Site Manager, on julie.brookes@english-heritage.org.uk, or Jake Tatman, Site Supervisor, on jake.tatman@english-heritage.org.uk

No agencies please.

Closing date: 19/01/2026 23:59:59

You will need to refer to the following documents when completing your application.