Curtain fixings, and how old is this porch?

[Tom]

Are there no original deeds held with the mortgage company? We weren't aware of any for our until, one day, a huge parcel came to us from the Abbey (as was). It contained original deeds, with wax seals and everything, going back to around 1720. The covering letter said they 'no longer had a requirement to keep them' :shock: They made very interesting reading (well, those tht we could decipher!!) and gave a fascinating insight into the history of our house. It might be worth checking with your mortgage company to see what they hold.

Jaqy

 

[MdB]

You were lucky. I believe a lot of mortgage companies just shred them....

 

[Tom]

You were lucky. I believe a lot of mortgage companies just shred them....

:shock: :shock: :evil: :evil:

Mind you, I suppose most people who received old deeds wouldn't really be interested in them anyway....not like us anoraks :lol: :lol:

Jaqy

 

[Nigel Watts]

Not beacon - think earldoms and poultry.

 

[Gareth Hughes]

Good Lord. Who is this person who wandered around writing down details of everyone's house? :shock: :shock: :shock:

But thankyou so so much for sharing this!

So that means the castly bit could not have been stuck on by Richard. He withheld things from me, but I can't believe he deliberately lied - we were very frank with one another, and I believe I have mentioned before that we became friends before purchasing the house, we stayed here and socialised with them a lot.

Unless when your book got revised they had been all over writing down how the houses looked in the 80s?

Do you mean my house was called Beacon Lodge? This is what the taxi drivers call it, it's always bewildered me.

Don't worry about the modest bit, it might have been modest to your chappy but it ain't to me!

He was wrong about the bungalow bit though, there's definitely 3 storeys here.

Pevsner names it as "_______by Lodge" and must be referring to chateau Joce. I don't have the first edition so I don't know if it was added in the revised edition. The eminent architectural historian John Harris did most of the secular building entries in the 1st ed., Nicholas Antram did the revision - however it's the sort of thing Harris might well have noticed as he was (and is) a better snooper than Pevsner himself. The revision did, however, involve a pretty thorough revisit to everything so it might have been added to the volume in the late 80s.

It's possible it was listed under the old Grade III and dropped from the lists inthe great 1980s listing resurvey, but unless the local council, the county council, or the records office have kept the out of date list that might be difficult to ascertain. I do get about one query a year from someone who's sure their house is listed but who is actually in that situation (we've not thrown the old lists away)

Re: the battlements - the porch doesn't look right to me at all. This may be down to its 1980s rebuilding, but the proportions and the details (including the leaded lights, the joinery generally and the relationships between the various elements) look wrong if it's supposed to be basically unaltered since c.1800. Are the battlements themselves stone or are they a cast material?

 

[Nigel Watts]

It all looks nicely painted on the outside, so this may not be the time to raise this, but have you considered using some colours other than white? It's difficult to get a good imitation stone effect in paint, but if you reduced the contrast between the stone of the battlements and the rendered wall by using a darker shade it could look more unified. Glazing bars dont have to be white either. Gareth's excellent link with its coloured plates is fascinating in this respect. White is used certainly, but also stone colour and quite a lot of dark green

 

[JoceAndChris]

Jaqy - Great idea about contacting the mortgage company regarding the original deeds, but "anoraks"?? Barbours darling, can I coin a new term?!

Gareth - thank you so much for all your information, we'd be lost without you on this forum. It really is good of you to shed light on this for me. I'll contact the council and see if they have an old list.

I still want to get the house listed and am trying to persuade Chris we need to do it now, not later.

If you say the porch is out of proportion then it probably is! I think the walls got rebuilt at the front in the 80s. Also a loo has been put in there in the 30s (?), so it's a divided room now. I don't know if that altered the outside appearance or not. You make me think from your comments that I shouldn't make any alterations without getting a historic architect for Chateau Joce.

Don't you think that's stone from all the lichen on it in the picture I posted? How do you tell cast stuff?

It's so fascinating all this stuff about Pevsner and Harris - I had no idea!

Nigel- thank you again for sharing your Pevsner and yes, I completely agree with you about changing the white paint, that's not my colour scheme, and I fully intend to obliterate all horrible white paint in the fullness of time. (I'm not saying white can't be nice, but not that horrid cheapest of the cheap gloss.) Also the render may well be chipped off here, and lime plastered. Thank you for your ideas about colours.

 

[Gareth Hughes]

There are advantages and disadvantages to getting it listed now rather than later. I'd never usually advise this, but it might be better to pull the Beacon Cottage pearl out of the oyster first (ie, do something about the not so good bits, which may or may not be original, like the porch), before inviting EH to tell you what a wonderfully authentic, well-preserved late Georgian hunting lodge it is, rather than finding yourself stuck with the not so good bits if the local CO is one of the ones who takes the view that every change (and every error the Georgians made) must be preserved.

There's just something about the battlements that looks a bit concretey to me. Can you tell what's stone and what's not in the picture below?


(answer, everything visible in this picture is concrete except the four columns, the architrave, the frieze and part of the cornice)

 

[Gareth Hughes]

PS - Joce, it does mean that you're MIP*, which not a lot of homeowners even on this forum can say (especially unusual for an unlisted house)

*Mentioned In Pevsner

 

[Tom]

I still want to get the house listed and am trying to persuade Chris we need to do it now, not later.

:shock: :shock: No!!! Do all your work first....then try to get it listed. Otherwise you'll be limited in what you can do. I say 'try' to get it listed because this is what I want to do with ours but Evelyn always said it was the devil's own job to achieve it. It all depends on whether or not there is sufficient original fabric left......unless you can prove that it's of particular local or national interest.

If I were you, I'd keep my head down and carry on doing what you're doing....like me

Jaqy

 

[Tom]

It's so fascinating all this stuff about Pevsner and Harris - I had no idea! The name is wrong though, it's not H- Lodge, but Beacon Cottage, on the paperwork, and in the 1901 Census. Maybe he just had an educated guess at the name.

Could the name have been changed? Our house had a name change from Water Hall to Cromwell House in the 1960's when some local clown decided it was yet another house that Oliver Cromwell had stayed at. That bloke sure did get around :roll: :lol:

Jaqy

 

[Gareth Hughes]

That's a really fascinating read Gareth, I'll go through it all later.

When you do, look in particular at Plate VII, especially the groundplan, ignoring the rustic character the elevations have been given, and consider carefully the text accompanying the plate, which suggests alternative architectural treatments for different landscapes, including

if it be a plain, embellished with tall aspiring trees, particularly a mixture of the pine, larch, and fir, with the oak and elm, and the distant scenery composed of long ranges of lofty hills and the spires of towns or cities, the features of the architecture should be Grecian, as the prevailing lines of its character harmonize both with the broad base on which it stands, and the spiry forms by which it is surrounded, with all the advantages of proper opposition without the extremes of contrast, between which distinction lie all that taste requires towards the beauty of its linear composition.

 

[JoceAndChris]

My word, it's as if the author of that were sat outside my polygonal bay supping tea and drinking it all in! What an extraordinary likeness. And these ideas, how did they circulate? How did the (presumably rather homespun) architect of my house come to be influenced by those fancies? How did fashion spread without the Internet, the TV, the architectural journals? It amazes me. I suppose the 18th C did see an absolute craze of home improvement and a radical change of tastes and behaviours. Just fascinating, thank you so much.

I am very very glad to read that word Grecian as that helps with things like choice of pictures, fabric etc. Chris is so delighted to read "gamekeeper's cottage" too as it makes him ever more determined to fill the place with stuffed boars' heads and decanters of brandy.

There are advantages and disadvantages to getting it listed now rather than later. I'd never usually advise this, but it might be better to pull the Beacon Cottage pearl out of the oyster first

I'm astonished and excessively flattered that you write this; I suppose it means that you do not think I'm going to ruin the character of the cottage. I do hope I can guard against myself, and resist grandification. I think I can with the help of this forum and other research that I really ought to be doing.

(answer, everything visible in this picture is concrete except the four columns, the architrave, the frieze and part of the cornice)

Gosh, if that's concrete in your picture bring it on. It looks fantastic! I'm sorry to say I really can't tell the difference. I think it looks very different where it's chipped though so I'll have a closer look at my battlements.

Thanks again for your wonderful help Gareth! And, oh, the heady heights of being a MIP!! Just wait till I tell the Duchess!

I still want to get the house listed and am trying to persuade Chris we need to do it now, not later.

If I were you, I'd keep my head down and carry on doing what you're doing....like me

Jaqy

You have a very strong case Jaqy! But what one of us, or both, dies? There's a chance that the whole thing would be knocked down and turned into a wind farm. And what would my ghost do then? I'd be hurling pots and pans about this hill for ever more! The houses are greater than us, they should be protected. Evelyn's right that it isn't easy to get them listed, but I think we should all try, and not just for our own buildings, but for buildings we love and that are at risk from the ravages of unsensitive development - as I've said before, if I had my way every old building would be listed and the police would come round and put you in the stocks when you start flicking through the UPVC catalogues!!

 

[Tom]

You have a very strong case Jaqy! But what one of us, or both, dies? There's a chance that the whole thing would be knocked down and turned into a wind farm.

Good grief, Joce....don't you have better things to worry about? :shock: I'm being serious. I mean, yes, we should all care for our properties and try to do what's right by them but worrying in case we die is, to say the least, rather extreme. Enjoy it while you can, in that case. Your house is no less worth listing than ours. In fact, I'd argue that you have more original fabric left than us, so you would probably have the stronger case. But either way, panic ye not about dying!!!!

Jaqy

 

[JoceAndChris]

OK!

 

[Gareth Hughes]

My word, it's as if the author of that were sat outside my polygonal bay supping tea and drinking it all in! What an extraordinary likeness. And these ideas, how did they circulate? How did the (presumably rather homespun) architect of my house come to be influenced by those fancies? How did fashion spread without the Internet, the TV, the architectural journals? It amazes me. I suppose the 18th C did see an absolute craze of home improvement and a radical change of tastes and behaviours. Just fascinating, thank you so much.

Books by Papworth, and Loudon, and John Plaw, and the Halfpenny brothers and Batty Langley a bit earlier, and lots more, were the equivalent of property makeover shows today, and they sold in pretty large numbers for the time (lots of people in need of a "hint" as to housing their employees).

Think of Papworth and co as a Jane Austen-era Kevin McDoodah, or Bossy Beeney. You (Lord and Lady H) buy the book, or borrow it form your neighbour Lord B, who is in the process of building an entire estate village at the gates of B House, see the charming design, look at the westward view despoiled by the sight of your tenant and his family sitting destitute in the snow eating dung, build the tenant a cottage so like the one in dear Mr Papworth's delightful volume.

 

[Tom]

I actually think considering one's impermanence is an extremely sensible use of time, and if more people organised their affairs in the event of their death there
would be a whole lot less stress caused to families.

Well, there's certainly an argument for sorting out who has the best china but I think it's going too far to get your house listed in case someone does something you don't like to it. After all, you won't be here to see it!! And, hypothetically, if that something you don't like distressed your family, why didn't you leave it to them in the first place?

Jaqy

 

[Nigel Watts]

Gareth you are a star. You put all the rank amateurs like me to shame.

I'm actualy a complete sham, having never attended a single history of art or architecture lesson in my life - I picked up most of what I know from sharing a set a rooms at University with a friend who was studying architecture while I was plodding through the Engineering course and then by reading books to stave off the boredom of Accountancy training.

 

[JoceAndChris]

Think of Papworth and co as a Jane Austen-era Kevin McDoodah, or Bossy Beeney. You (Lord and Lady H) buy the book, or borrow it form your neighbour Lord B, who is in the process of building an entire estate village at the gates of B House, see the charming design, look at the westward view despoiled by the sight of your tenant and his family sitting destitute in the snow eating dung, build the tenant a cottage so like the one in dear Mr Papworth's delightful volume.

:lol: I see! Just glorious.

I've read through a lot of the Papworth now and will read it in sections by firelight to Chris, who is also thrilled to have this sudden information. It's a wonderful work; I love it - had a look to see if I could buy one but it seems to be rather rare? There is an awful lot in there about what is appropriate and what is not, which is making me want to revise several decisions. It is also extremely helpful with garden design. Thank you so much for giving me this whilst we still have not really started on anything major. It seems that render is absolutely desirable for all these cottages.

I remain amazed that from the little you know about my house, and have seen of it, you are able to put your finger on this! I just can't thank you enough.

 

[JoceAndChris]

Gareth you are a star. You put all the rank amateurs like me to shame.

I'm actualy a complete sham, having never attended a single history of art or architecture lesson in my life - I picked up most of what I know from sharing a set a rooms at University with a friend who was studying architecture while I was plodding through the Engineering course and then by reading books to stave off the boredom of Accountancy training.

Never mind how you know what you know, it's more than what I do, and bloomin helpful!