Warehouse chic - For So Zo! :)

The most fabulous Zoe of So Zo, what do you know? once posted about how much she would love to live and work in a warehouse. As I kind of do, I promised to post some pics that actually SHOW this about my living space. The ones I've posted before say more about my OTT tastes and penchant for red and gold furnishings (I think I missed an illustrious career doing interiors for Chinese restaurants and bordellos!) than the provenance of this wonderful space.
It was originally the Empire Spice Factory, and after a short and famous career as student living, was converted in around 1997 to eight flats, and we have the one in the front top.

This is an old photo as the decor visible through the windows isn't ours, nor is it that of the previous owner! I nicked it off a real estate website.
I am told by a friend who quite coincidentally flatted there "23 years ago when it was a studenty dump" (his words) that in certain weather you could smell the spices in the floor. I was so hoping this would happen still but alas no!
Anyway, I think our place falls well short of Zoe's fabulously evocative description:  "a sanitised, pre-converted trendy warehouse pad with its token ‘original’ exposed brick work wall and fancy lampshades installations" but it's not her ideal either: "a big industrial or ex-industrial space, all brick and concrete, with lots of light and air in which to spread out to live and create. Big areas [...] in which we would work and generate ideas and hang out and relax."
Zoe I love how you put words together! :)
In spite of not being an enormous industrial feeling space (requiring a LOT of heating, she thought practically) it does however achieve being a place in which I and other creative types hang out and create :) Several such sessions are in previous posts, but there are heaps more.

 But first some crazy ceiling shots to show how interesting this space is still. This one shows the skylight over the stairs and a glimpse of my costumes rack (shrouded in a white sheet to protect it from fading)

 Same view, different angle. I think our ceiling at its highest would be 6m.

 This is where the ceiling drops to accommodate the upstairs space.

 The stairway to (sewists') heaven!

BAAAD photo! This space is 6m by 4m at least, but with the DH lurking around on the computer in his dressing gown, and the place being a tip right now, I can't get a good all encompassing shot. But I have 4 tall cupboards for stash, lots of shelves for, umm, more stash, lots of bookshelves, and two big sewing tables so at least three of us can set up machines. A quilter's envy; design wall big enough to take a queen size quilt, the "big computer" and its desk (where I am now) and windows on three sides with views over the rooftops of one of the funkiest parts of town!
So, it is pretty darn fabulous. And I fought for it! :)
Like Zoe, a part of me yearns for the big industrial space to live, work and create in. But for now, I am chuffed as ever to finally have a home that works for us on almost every level, at a price we could afford. And I wish the same for you, Zoe, and every other creative soul working away on the dining table or in a dark nook somewhere :)

Seeing the world in black and white

England is abloom with daffodils and blossoms; there is plenty of colour However, I m fascinated by the black and white houses. Not all are Tudor, I love that Mock Tudor here is something that happened in the 18th C!! In NZ, it happened in the 1970's!

 In Shrewsbury or Hereford, can't remember now but both towns are black and white house heaven! Do click on the image, hopefully in its bigger size you can see how very higgledy piggledy this place is.

 Shrewsbury? Hereford? Sorry! What amazes me is that you will find 17th C houses/shops with a Boots Chemist or a Costa's cafe in the bottom of them. Talk about two centuries living together!

 This one leans ominously over the street-look how crooked the windows are! The leaning I think was built in but as these jutting out second storeys are not really supported by anything, it may also be down to time. Me, I wouldn't be standing in the window jumping upside down, all I'm sayin'.

 Isn't this a cutey! And take a look at the door and frame! The doors on these places are amazing. I'm doing a whole blog on doors one day. Hereford.

 The Old House in Hereford town square. It's a museum and the upper rooms are full of furniture from the time. All bedrooms interconnect upstairs as was the Tudor way, and the labels suggest that the curtains on four poster beds were not just for warmth but also privacy!

Oh My Giddy Aunt! This is Umbrella Cottage just 30m down the road from our B&B in Lyme Regis. Amazingly it was built in the 19th C! Early on mind you. It was a Toll house originally. So far it tops my Favourite House list. I've not seen any others like it. Has anyone else?
These are a mere sampling of the buildings we've seen and I've photographed. So much house bling, so little time!

Tor Blimey.

Glastonbury is such an amazing place. Famous for its Tor, Abbey and well. Among other things. The Tor is a challenge difficult to resist, and as it is also the easiest place to find, sticking up so much, we headed there before doing anything else, took a deep breath or three, and tackled it. All nearly 600ft of it.

Mysterious and spiritual, the Tor and its tower dominate the Glastonbury skyline.

 Proof I was there! It nearly did for me but after managing to climb to the top of the hill in Incheon, no way was I letting this one defeat me. And it was worth every gasping breath and aching muscle.

 Using the camera zoom to spy on the residents of farms around the base of the Tor. That white thing in the back yard looked familiar...

...Only In Glastonbury will you look down upon a beautiful Somerset landscape, and spot a yurt in someone's yard!
Incidentally, while in Glastonbury you can buy any type of healing crystal, hippy clothing, book on magic, ethnic jewellery, ceremonial cloak, spell or potion, etc, you cannot buy a pair of knickers or socks! It is very much geared up for tourism. But charmingly so. And there is a town called Street only a mile away that sells lots of high st stuff and that's where the vast majority of very normal Glastonburians do their clothes shopping!

Why I pulled the plug on Bath

I was so excited about going to Bath. What diehard Jane Austen and Georgette Heyer fan would not be? I even know the names of several of the streets.
We got there mid afternoon and we were tired. The town is like dodgem cars - lots of windy, one way streets and strange intersections, and heaps upon heaps of traffic. We finally found our hotel only to find it was not exactly walking distance back into town. And it wasn't anywhere as nice as it thought it was. So, we had a few hours of relaxing in our room before venturing forth again for dinner.
Bath is expensive. Very. We settled for a plate of chips and a drink each, 8GBP. The only good thing to come of it is that the pub in question was quite pretty, and had bone chine teacups and saucers as tealight holders. Very effective, especially the whiter ones.  Then home to bed.
The next day we headed out, determined to make the most of our day in Bath. Wondering where all the famous architecture and streets were, I realised that if one looks UP, there they are. The Georgian residential part of Bath is built on a pretty steep hillside. So we went to take a look. At least up there there was no traffic.

 Peeking thorugh someone's front gate, I saw this amazing Wendy House. It's practically a granny flat!

Typical example of the Georgian terrace houses and garden. Not THE Georgian Terrace of course, that is amazing but there are heaps of pics of it online.
By the by, these streets are steep and quite a haul up from the town below. I wonder if this contributed to the demise of Bath as a fashionable place to go - I can imagine ladies hiking up that hill in Regency stays, but once corsets started to reshape waistlines and dresses got heavier and more cumbersome, I'd be making excuses not to go!
By 11am I confess we had had enough and we ran away to Wells and Glastonbury. I never went to any museums, not even to the Jane Austen Centre. I am so chcken! But honestly, the place is a bunfight and I think it requires a stop of several days and better planning and concentration that we were capable of by then.
Can you forgive me??

Hitum, Titum or scrub

Disclaimer: If you have never read or heard of Mapp and Lucia, nor seen it on dvd, it is set in the 1920's and is about the cut and thrust of social supremacy in a small village. Delightful and hilarious stuff. Think P G Wodehouse with an extra 50 IQ points and better female characters. I have all of the books and the DVDs of the fab TV series made in the 1980's, for anyone who is interested. 
These are the three dress codes in Tilling, the village brought to us through the pages of Mapp and Lucia and E F Benson's other fabulous Lucia books. Hitum was for dinner parties, Titum for formal day occasions and Scrub was whatever you are wearing at the time.
Rye, a stunning village on the South Coast of England, is indeed the Tilling of the books. Now that I have been there myself it is so apparent, and the TV series filmed in 1983-87 used the village, although they changed things a bit - choosing different houses from the ones in the book because of accessibility, photogenicness etc.
Rye has Hitum, Titum and Scrub all of its own.

Moi on Mermaid Street, still cobbled and featuring some of the prettiest teashops, houses and guest houses a girl could ever dream of.

The Bell, 14thC Inn on The Mint (Rye is short on Streets and long on evocative names like The Mint, Wish Ward etc)
Titum:

or possibly Tightum: the steps up to the top of the church tower. I did not take this picture - David made the climb and had to turn sideways sometimes to do it, which pretty much put me out of the picture for fitting up the stairs! I am very impressed that Mapp ever made it herself, in search of evidence to condemn Lucia's pretences at Italian and reclaim her position as Queen of Tilling. It failed of course.
Scrub:
Rye had the best op shops and antique shops of anywhere I've been and I purchased quite a hoard. Some treasures though I left behind included these lovely tapestries in the window of a shop

 Early 2oth C sampler of sorts.

 Far more modern and far cheaper, but still pretty.

I feel I should revert to Hitum for the last image, which is of Lamb House; the Mallards of the books. It is not that impressive from the outside, being jammed into a corner like that, however the wall is to its impressive garden and it has been the home of Henry James and E F Benson over the years.

I have pinched a photo of it from the other side off the National Trust website, I'm sure they won't mind:

It was not open when we were there, such a pity. Can you imagine the garden parties on this lawn?!
And of course, it is from Rye/Tilling that I have brought away the piece of art that I will wear forever more...but more on that later!
Lucia may even have approved. Mapp definitely would not.

Cathedral bling

Religious or not, you just cannot beat a cathedral for bling. Fabric, stone and glass are the favoured materials, with tapestry, mosaic, carving, molding, gilding, painting, sculpting and probably a zillion other techniques employed in the process.

Altar cloth, alas much faded, in Salisbury. This is in a side chapel dedicated to a female saint, so I thought the introduction of exquisite textile work was highly appropriate. Date forgotten, at a guess, early 19thC

 As if the gorgeous vaulted ceiling isn't enough, there is added this gorgeous fresco work. This is in the prayer chapel at Salisbury.

 A closer up shot of the beautiful, delicate painting

Gloomy bits of cathedrals are really hard to photograph and with no access to Photoshop I'm having to leave them as I tok 'em. This is the ceiling of the entrance hall into Cirencester Cathedral. It has an art nouveau feel to it don't you think? Very forward thinking of those 13th C masons!
I have many more but until I can photoshop them, they will have to wait.

Living in an icing bag

Would you? Live in an icing bag I mean. When we got to Kent and East Sussex, it appeared to be all the rage.

 One for chocolate, one for vanilla perhaps?

An extra one for pink icing?
The mind boggles! I did have vague recollections of seeing these or reading about them but after consulting some locals it turns out the icing bags are oast houses. These were built in the 19thC for kiln drying hops. The nozzle on top is a chimney cowl. Converting them into homes is very de rigeur.
I do worry about the British though, with their straw roofs, icing bags and frankly pretty crazy building techniques over the years, none of which seemed to involve either straight lines or right angles! My father would have a fit if he saw them! hehehe

What God has joined, let no man rip asunder...

..unless it is a church! The 14thC church at Selsey on the south coast, was split at some point, and most of it was moved from a tiny marshy bit of land at a place called Church Norton, into Selsey itself.
I don't know why this happened but given the sheer stony weightiness of the main Church, it's a pretty impressive undertaking.

 This is the Chapel of St Wilfred, formed from the sanctuary of the original church. You can really tell at the south wall is so plain!

 Excuse the crazy angle, but isn't the ceiling amazing! It was such a delightful little chapel.

 This is St Peters, the main bit that they moved block by block, to this new site, about four miles away. It has a 'new' sanctuary, which you can just see cut off on the right.

Inside St Peter's. The ceilings of the two definitely suit each other.
I had a mad idea that since this was the closest thing David has to a home town, that we could have our marriage blessed or renew our vows or something. unfortunately there was no one at either church even though they were both open to the public, so it never happened. Ah well. :)

The Vanity of Mankind - as shown in its churches!

While pootling around Merry England we have stopped at a range of churches, from smallish parish churches to the huge cathedrals, which frankly make current attempts to dominate with phallic high rises pretty tragic. Given the technology available, the cathedrals we have seen so far - Cirencester, Winchester, Salisbury and Chichester, are mind boggling. As they are meant to be of course. It was all about reminding the population, and the king, that the church was both huge and mighty. And God of course.
I could write fifty posts about them and I probably will write a few but the first thing I noticed about them is how many dead people are buried IN the churches. In the floor, in the walls, it's really pretty ick if you dwell on it. But that's how they rolled. And of course, the grandeur of one's tomb was very important to one's own grandeur.

 A particularly fine example of lat 19th C Arts and Crafts copper, probably they should probably stop polishing it though. This is in Salisbury Cathedral. The fashion for interment in the church had passed by then but memorial plaques were de rigeur.

 14th C, covered in carved graffiti! Salisbury

 Tudor Maximalism in Salisbury. It's great that they have painted it up as it would have been.

 In a Norman church in a wee village called Uffington. His nibs was a big benefactor in the late 16th C. He looks very restful, and casual compared to the very formal tombs in the big cathedrals

 Heaps of people are buried under the floors. Ick! But the reason I chose this one is because it uses the Old English for of The, which is the letter eth (looks like a Y) with an e above it, which is where the whole Ye thing came from. It's tosh - eth is pronounced 'th' as in 'the' and 'that'.

 These guys are so cute! His head rests on his helmet and he holds his gauntlet instead of a sword, and notice that he and the Missus are holding hands? Talk about your 14th C love story...this is in Chichester Cathedral.

In Chichester again, this very plain tomb is from 1121! It predates the whole fancy pants tomb trends. Quite moving.
So there you go, 1000 years of interment trends.

Thatching - A heck of a way to make a roof!

I've seen pictures of thatched cottages of course, and have seen programmes about how it is done but I've never seen it in the ...er... flesh, and thatched cottages are amazing!!

A roof ridge being rethatched. Apparently it is VERY expensive these days and needs doing every ten years. And the insurance is massive, it being such a fire risk. Yet, if you own a thatched house then you have to replace the thatch with like, them's the rules. No reeds, no clever German plastic straw thatching, just the old fashioned expensive kind. 

 This is the other half of the same house after it's been trimmed and shaped. Love the shaping they do on the ridges

Two cheeky little thatched birds on the roof of Pear Tree Cottage

 I love the way this one looks so moulded and sculpted, not just from front to back but all around.

 The Six Bells at Warborough, just outside of Wallingford- this pub is The Black Swan which is the local pub on Midsomer Murders. Particularly fine sculpting. It is on a real village green too, which is just a big triangle of grass with a tree on it and a few cottages around the edge, not even on the road. Good place to film and not block traffic!

The Bell in Faringdon

Faringdon is an OLD market town we discovered by accident, and then we popped into a pub on the square to ask about accommodation, and ended up staying there - not bad for 60GBP inc breakfast.
The Bell is one of those buildings that has grown over time, starting in the 14th C!!!!

 The Bell at it is today. Our room was the two windows above the left hand bay. The far left section of the building is 14th C. The newest thing in the whole place is probably the people. Click on ny image to see a bigger version, it's worth it for the details.

The snug is the oldest part, and was covered in paintings, done in 1969! Underneath apparently are far older paintings. They told us that there are five mice in the mural, but we coud only find four.

 Aren't the gaming machines anachronistic? But that's modern Britain for you- the 21st C sitting somewhat self consciously on top of all that history...

 The bird in the third panel from the left is a jackdaw, it has a ring in its mouth and a next full of pogey bait. Remind us of anyone?

 The painting under the window is OLD, possibly 300 years or more, It looks like it may have been trees. See the doorway? That wall is nearly 30 inches thick at its base!

 The new proprietors had only been there 3 weeks themselves. Lovely people with a daughter who reminded me of Julia a lot - beautiful, knowing eyes. :) It was only after we left that we recognised who they actually were though - Magrat and Verence!!!! Such a pity they are both camera shy as I think they should be standing proudly outside this pub, which had been allowed to run down, and that they are steadily bringing back into favour.
We made the Bell our base for two days and 'did' a big chunk of the Cotswolds from there, including meeting David's aunt Con, whose house is 700 years old in one part.
All this history and the Brits are so used to it they are oblivious. Amazing!