Time
I was going to post "in a few days" about Avebury Manor. I suppose this counts as a few days...doesn't it? Anyway, I'm goanna get this post out today. It's about a couple of things I did (including Avebury) on the theme of re-imagining the past. The crucial word is "imagining". The past itself is living elsewhere in time, isn't it? Which is why we cannot visit it - but we can have some fun imagining and even re-creating it.
So here is this little fellow lying on the grandest of four poster beds and looking around at the big new world surrounding him.
He is looking up at this - a gold and red canopy with pleated silk and gold tassels.
He's lying in a very fancy bedroom in Avebury Manor, a charming house owned by the National Trust. This bedroom has panelled, painted and marbled walls and scarlet swagged curtains, the colours are bright, thee's a painted ceiling full of clouds, and a portrait of all kind of exotic birds - and much more.
And nearly all of it created just a few years ago.
In case you didn't read my last post, Avebury manor is the biggest house in a unique village in Wiltshire which is built right in the middle of a Neolithic henge and ritual landscape. It is a higgledy-piggledy place, made of local stone, reflecting no - or perhaps all - periods of recent history.
It was built on the site of a much older building, but the oldest surviving part is from about 1550, and there have been additions ever since. When the National Trust acquired the house, decades ago, it was empty of furniture and so was not much of a visitor attraction. However, in a very bold move the Trust agreed nearly ten years ago that BBC television would turn nine of the house's empty rooms into a kind of stage set to reflect various periods in its history.
The plan was to build on the original features that still remained in the empty house - the plaster ceilings, the panelled walls, the old doors - but re-imagine it with new items, hand painted, hand gilded, hand woven, hand carved, and all of them in exact period style for each different room. Accessories - books, plates, less important furniture - would be genuine period (but not very high value) items sourced from auctions and secondhand shops.
So,unlike other stately homes whose contents are roped off and fitted with alarms, there would be no objection to Avebury Manor's visitors treating the house in a normal, careful way - picking up objects, sitting on the beds, lounging on the sofas, in a way that is impossible with fragile antique furniture. And hence the reason that Baby is lying on that four poster bed.
It's really great wandering around Avebury Manor now. Look at this beautiful Tudor room - sparsely furnished by our standards, but very appealing with the sun coming in and brightening the heraldic crests and oak furniture.
What about the Chinese handpainted wallpaper in the 18th century dining room? It was painted a few years ago in China to old designs, and reflects the Georgian love of chinoiserie.
My favourite room might almost be the cosy art deco parlour with its old book-cases, specially woven geometrical carpet and emerald green sofa.
Just the place to relax, but really, each of the rooms is a delight.
As soon as I got home I went online and bought one of the results of the BBC's work. It's a book called "The Manor Reborn" which is available secondhand, and a four part series. It's not currently available but I hope you can access this hour of Vimeo which shows Episode 1. Or, even better, visit Avebury Manor and see it for yourself.
A few days after returning from Avebury, I was again wandering round re-imagining history. To be honest, I'd never heard of the Chiltern Open Air Museum. But there it was on the map, just 45 minutes from where we live in North London, and we had a day free. So we went to see what it was like.
I really loved it. It is run by a charity that rescues unwanted but unusual local buildings and puts them up again in a 44 acre smallholding. It was the most enchanting little world - reminded me a bit of a children's story where cars are banned and all the grown ups are happy in their work.
The place depends on volunteers, but as you see, they don't dress up in antique costumes and re-enact old-world lives. They do work very hard on the site: charcoal burning and growing veg (the results sold to raise money) they look after ponds and wildlife and animals, restore old farm vehicles, re-erect and convert properties to modern use. I even came across these guys building a modern Nissen hut as a teaching space for kids, to match an original Nissen hut parked alongside.
I really loved it. It is run by a charity that rescues unwanted but unusual local buildings and puts them up again in a 44 acre smallholding. It was the most enchanting little world - reminded me a bit of a children's story where cars are banned and all the grown ups are happy in their work.
The place depends on volunteers, but as you see, they don't dress up in antique costumes and re-enact old-world lives. They do work very hard on the site: charcoal burning and growing veg (the results sold to raise money) they look after ponds and wildlife and animals, restore old farm vehicles, re-erect and convert properties to modern use. I even came across these guys building a modern Nissen hut as a teaching space for kids, to match an original Nissen hut parked alongside.
In case you don't know what a Nissen hut is, it's a simple hut, semi circular in section, made of corrugated iron or similar material, Many were put up during and after the war, and used mainly as offices, store-rooms, even libraries and canteens. The photo below shows an original hut re-erected in the museum, with tape criss-crossed over its windows, as was customary to protect it from bomb blasts.
My favourite buildings were hard to choose, but they included a splendid Victorian public toilet, a little cricket pavilion now used to house the museum's charity shop, and a prefab. Prefabs were prefabricated houses used after the war to re-home people who had been bombed out. They had surprisingly spacious rooms and were very comfortable and convenient for the time. They were only supposed to last for fifteen years but many survived on for much longer, with their inhabitants most reluctant to exchange them for modern flats.
Below is the prefab's living room. I was surprised at how many of these objects I have seen in real life - that rug with the rose design, the chair, the clock on the mantelpiece. I suppose there wasn't much choice in those days.
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It's hard to choose which photographs to put in this post. The village hall? The tin church? The straw-plaiter's cottage, the old granary, or enormous ancient barns? I did like the wooden apple store below, now sited in the museum's orchard.
I also adored the gothick toll house complete with board giving a list of tolls. to be paid by all who passed through the turnpike gate.
The furnishings of some of the houses also offer glimpses into a past I'm glad I don't have to live in. Look at this innocuous glass below. Known as a Penny Lick, it is a little glass cup that street iceream sellers used. It often wasn't washed between customers - can you imagine? Just one of the things that contributed to the huge amount of contagious disease in the 19th century.
And in a barn, we spotted an original "cherry picker" These days, that generally means a hydraulic crane with a platform, used for working on overhead power lines. Then, it was a long ladder with an extra wide base base. Here is an old photo of one in use - how dangerous does that look?
The one we saw was stored right across the top of a large barn. I couldn't get far away enough to photograph it but I did wonder how they got it there.
Still, despite the dangers and lack of hygiene, I would still travel back into the real past if I could. Just for a few weeks, perhaps...
And now I am very busy working on a new and interesting project which I'll share it with you in a few weeks' time. In any spare time, T and I are making use of the fine weather to see the English countryside as autumn comes on. Inspired by the Chiltern Open Air museum, we're looking around this particular bit of the home counties - where Buckinghamshire, Bedfordshire and Hertfordshire meet.
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