House Hunting: Moving moments

We moved into our fnal resting place in 2001 on Halloween to be precise, six years later as I contemplated calling the builders in  for Phase II of the R£NOVATION, I spent my time day dreaming especially about those little ways and means of making the budget stretch just that little bit further....

"I swear the chimney creaked today. So I have been eyeing all day. As the winds howl round it and sleet slaps into it horizontally, I swear it must be moving - I actually want it to fall down! I long for it to fall down.

Just think of the damage a nine-foot chimney could do. Not those tall skinny ones on the more modern house such as a Georgian or Victorian one but a good old Tudor/Jacobean one, which houses an inglenook the size of a highly desirable London bed-sit.

Bearing in mind the Westerly gale, it should fall down the eastern part of the roof smashing through the attic, crashing across the small room, hopefully catching Charlie’s bedroom window on the way down. Wrecking the render perhaps? A good honest bit of damage. Roughly, what? Say £30,000 - £40,000.

I almost feel like walking along the roof ridge to give it a bit of a nudge. However, after some 450 years of being up there, my hopes are hardly likely to come true – I’ll just have to resort to the Lottery again.

Oh, how happy and naïve we were when we heard that the house was ours. The euphoria carried us for weeks and then the business of moving again cast a cloud over my existence. This would be the third move in two years – I suddenly realised just what my poor mother had to put up with following my father round the world with increasing regularity.

Whereas the move from London had been organised and slick, the move to Rookyard from rented accommodation was anything but. There was no Charlie to help; he was too tired of an evening to pack everything away. So it was left to me. I tried to put everything back in the right boxes but this time instead of knowing where everything was I didn’t and I didn’t know where I it was going either!

The pressure was increased when our landlord kindly informed us that he had already let the house we were renting to the underbidders – the family that had gone on holiday.

F**k!!

So, there I was, frantically packing and cleaning and longing to get out of there before the Underbidders turned up. They were due to come round the house on the day we moved out. With luck we shouldn’t meet.

Luck’s not like that.

In the middle of slapping post it notes on the boxes, scrubbing the banisters, stuffing the cats into their basket, the Jack Russels go off in paroxysms of barking.

And there she is getting out of her gleaming brand new navy blue Volvo – the wife of the Underbidder.

As she stalks her way to the door she barks: “Well we made you pay for it!”

She enters: “Well, you haven’t done much with this place have you?”

She stomps upstairs: “Well, we’ll have to get them to make this room up, I’m not paying all this rent for that.”

I haven’t uttered a word, my mind has atrophied with shock and all the things I should be saying just don’t.

Me: “Well, umm, would you like some tea?”

To my horror she says yes and then as I heroically scramble about and search for the kettle among all the newspapers, cardboard boxes, crates and suitcases, the removal men turn up and it’s all systems go, but she’s still there. Still wanting tea. Running from Kitchen to drawing room I manage to oversee a semblance of packing and at the same time carry out teatime inanities.

It is such a relief when she leaves I don’t notice that the removal men have completed the packing without me and suddenly the house is empty - everything is gone.
The relief is huge – then I remember that they don’t have a key for Rookyard and where the hell are the cats? Packed!

A sad and creepy story…

Imagine if you will that you are with child, or your sister is or even your daughter; in this day and age it is usually a time for great rejoicing whether you are married or not. Now go back some 450 years and imagine yourself living in a small closed community, I’m afraid you are not rich and you are not educated and the father of the child, well he is not available. In fact he is more than likely to be your master.
If the pregnancy goes to term there will be long lasting repercussions; ignominy for the bearer, bastardy for the child and absolute disgrace for the family not just for a few years but for generations until finally the story is forgotten – what lengths would you and/ or your family go to protect yourselves?
Such is the fashion of the day that the fact that you are pregnant can be hidden; you continue to work knowing that should you be found out all will be lost. You can tell no one. It does not matter how tired you are, or if you feel unwell everything must continue as normal. Even at night there is no solace. The future looks so bleak.
Then comes the day of reckoning: is it natural or is it forced. Have you or your family been off to see the wise woman? What potions have you drunk? Has a member of your family taken matters into their own hands and brought about the event?
Everything starts to happen and you have managed to sneak away to your room; it may be at night but whatever time it is, it is more than likely you are on your own. You must make no noise. You must not be caught. Everything depends on secrecy.
The child is born, your child. Your first born.
I pray it is born dead, I am told it was more than likely to have been born dead as forensics say it was most certainly premature. All I know is that you hid the child, your shame and for 450 years it lay undisturbed and deliberately forgotten. And then, it was found, by us.
It was the beginning of 2004 and Charlie was having a week off to help the builders as they wrecked the joint. This involved the removal of the roof on one wing from either side of the massive Tudor chimney which housed two inglenook fireplaces on the ground floor and a third equally impressive fireplace on the first floor in what was once the master’s apartments.
I went off to do something or other and as I pulled away I jokingly said to mind the mummified cats, which I said they were bound to find. Charlie did and a lot more besides.
As Charlie tried to remove some wallpaper from the first floor bedroom on the opposite side of the chimney from the master’s apartments, the plaster came away and within minutes the whole wall, which was made of wattle and daub, disintegrated revealing what is colloquially termed a “Witches’ Midden”
This comprised a mummified cat, some shoes, a witches broom, a winnowing circle and a carved wooden spoon as well as a petrified mouse, a long dead bird and a couple of thatch stakes and a bill hook.
Charlie was so excited! And to be honest so was I. What a find! It was dark on my return so I had no chance of seeing everything in situ that night but the very next morning I took a closer look. What I found literally made my blood run cold.
Charlie and the boys had moved the heaps of dirt - for that is what it all looked like - into another room and were in the process of taking it down the stairs and out onto the bonfire. Charlie mentioned that he thought there was also a mummified dog but it was only partial. I was confused – in all the writings about old houses in the region I had never heard of people using dogs in this way. A sort of dread began to creep up on me and I started to look through the mess. I came across the top of a skull just the dome of it down to the top of the eye sockets – easily mistaken for a dog by it’s size but the eyes were wrong. What I was handling was definitely human.
When this happens there is ONLY one course of action. Call the police.
Within half an hour they were here and although we and they were convinced the remains were hundreds of years old we became a crime scene and all work ceased.
It started to dawn on us what we were dealing with and as I held my own baby close all I could think on was how had this happened? When had it happened? Why had it happened? And across the years my heart went out to the mother of this child.
Forensics were brilliant and within a few days we knew that what we were dealing with was a baby. More than likely born premature because of the way the bones had disintegrated and because of it’s size. They said it would have been unlikely to be put there alive; it was probably born dead then hurriedly hidden.
I still feel uncomfortable about it but I also feel that the house wanted to give up its secrets, the burden that it had carried for so long. We buried the remains in the old Church Yard at St Mary’s with a simple service carried out by our then vicar Rev Robin Jack who had cleared the way with the Diocese. The local funereal director had donated a tiny coffin and I planted snowdrops from the farm on the grave. Perhaps the child’s mother lies in the churchyard as well. I hope she found peace.

What makes us grown up?

What makes us grown up? What defines a grown up and do we ever grow up? A recent discussion on the Nanny State sparked by the introduction on a ban on smoking in public places has got me trying to define responsibility, growing up and whether as a society we chase after youth so much that we are actually striving to be childish.
When I remember the adults in my life, usually from the perspective of being a child, they seemed so poised, so in control of their lives, to be frank plain organised and of course pearls of wisdom dropped off their lips like rain drops off the scaffolding outside my window.
Where have all the adults gone? Who can I look to, to show me how to be a grown-up? Is there a grown-up ideal? And if not can I fashion one? Do I have the skills to be a grown up?
But what is by far more scary is: will I be able to pass on what little skill/knowledge I have about being an adult so that my children will have the opportunity to be grown up in turn?
So what is a grown up?
For starters there is a certain selflessness about a true grown up. Less id and ego more super ego. There is an ethical integrity - they are the people we lesser mortals look up to for moral guidance.
Perhaps having two World Wars one after the other killed off too many grown ups and left the remainder with the belief that they must be doing something wrong. The resulting sea change was so strong – playing as it did to the id or child in all – that like a ball rolling down hill the momentum took over until the change was out of control - the problem is no one noticed.
There is so much I wish to explain regarding my theories about grown ups but I am tired and I will not be able to express myself adequately. Perhaps as I expound I may find enlightenment or just plain clarity….

I'm not sure what they are doing...

I am not quite sure what my builders are doing; I know what I asked them to do and I am pretty sure they are doing it but HOW they are doing it is beyond me.
Financial constraints being what they are there is only so much that we as the owners/clients can afford. There is no point in me gazing rapturously at Homes & Gardens, House Beautiful, Period Home or dare I say it Country Living - what has to be sorted out is as far removed from those glossy pages as I am from being the next Kinsella.
The priority list was drawn up: Roof, Render, Chimney, Windows, Doors, interior walls, electrics and plumbing. Not a colour swatch in site, not even flooring! As with any old building – and this one is pushing 500 years - the deeper you delve the more there is to do.
It should be easy to see what there is to do but render has a habit of covering up all sorts of sins: dry rot; death watch beetle, wood worm, the fact that the sole plate has completely disintegrated and how no one, least of all my builder, could believe the house has managed to stand up for this length of time!
The first thing Geoff, the wood stroking hippy builder, did on arrival was to immediately slap in four acro-props across the big room underneath the main beam. He then showed me why. There was no tennon attaching the beam to the main frame of the house and someone in the last 20 years had removed a support on the other side.
I had always laughed about secretly and not so secretly wanting the house to fall down. Geoff showed me how very close we had come. Chopping off the render he revealed the extent to which the house was coming apart. A salutatory lesson for any listed building owner.
Concrete render had led to rising damp and dry rot through the whole sole plate upon which the main frame rests; botched building work had seen the removal of a floor integral to keeping the house from falling down, a lopsided roof with more weight on one side than the other caused more pressure on the sole plate leading to a buckled brick plinth and a rotation on various nodal points. It was no wonder acro-props installed!
“Do you think your husband should move from his room now?”
Blanching at all this information I agreed. The only thing separating Dear Charlie from annihilation had been a rather long and rusty nail and a great deal of cobwebs.
As building work progressed Geoff had revealed to me – with somewhat macabre delight – all the botched jobs, mind-boggling ineptitude of previous incumbents. Suffice to say I blame it on the Georgians.
Many houses in Suffolk have what I call a T-shaped floor plan. The original timber framed building at right angles to the Queen Anne/Georgian/Victorian frontage not many properties have been Georgianified.
Mine was.
This has meant that a Medieval/Tudor L-shaped building has undergone radical surgery to fit the 1830s ideal. Gone are the frumpy and possibly nay bulky oriel windows to south and east and gone are the tapering doors, intricate ceiling carvings and probably ancient mullions. To be replaced with nebulous regularity – albeit glazed.
In order to reach this ideal the frame was forced to fit. So we have windows placed in front of mainframe beams making it impossible to open them let alone look out of them but when has fashion ever played second fiddle to practicality.
What does this leave us with in the C21st century? An extreme muddle. Planning - or listed building regulations - mean that we have to have a slight psychotic renovation. Therefore we add wood - huge great beams - to rectify all the Georgian muddle, yet we have to add windows a la Georgian and put them in front of huge great studs. So externally we remain the Georgian ideal and internally - well we muddle through…So Back to Geoff and what he is doing – I haven’t the foggiest but at least Dear Charlie won’t find himself covered in rubble.