Heritage Open Days

[Feltwell]

Are coming around again in a week's time:-

http://www.heritageopendays.org.uk/directory

Your chance to get into some interesting local places that are normally closed, or get into some places that usually charge, for free!

 

[LadyArowana]

Are coming around again in a week's time:-

http://www.heritageopendays.org.uk/directory

Your chance to get into some interesting local places that are normally closed, or get into some places that usually charge, for free!

Is Feltwell Towers on the list? Impromptu PPUK Partaaaay :lol:

 

[FamilyWiggs]

That website didn't include any of our Welsh treasures, as far as I could see.

Here's a couple of links for folk who are lucky enough to find themselves West of the border in the next few weeks:

http://www.dailypost.co.uk/whats-on/whats-on-news/open-doors-2014-north-wales-7705950
http://cadw.wales.gov.uk/opendoors/?lang=en

Cheers

Robin

 

[vicky whitworth]

I've just tried to email Dartmoor National Park to book a tour of Uppacott - a Devon longhouse to get a bounce back that says that the visitors' centres for the national park are now operating winter opening times. What? In September :shock: I was thinking of taking the tent and wild camping on the moor after the tour but I didn't realise it was winter.

 

[Feltwell]

Is Feltwell Towers on the list? Impromptu PPUK Partaaaay :lol:

Not unless you all come armed with gardening tools, decorating tools, carpentry tools, plastering tools and lots of skill and enthusiasm to help me finish it off! :wink:

 

[fluffytail10]

Its also the Green Build Fair at Felbrigg in Norfolk this weekend

 

[a twig]

Is Feltwell Towers on the list? Impromptu PPUK Partaaaay :lol:

Not unless you all come armed with gardening tools, decorating tools, carpentry tools, plastering tools and lots of skill and enthusiasm to help me finish it off! :wink:

I'm a member of a LR club and we do "hit squads" where in return for accom, pizza and beer, club members descend to help out if major work is required on someone's vehicle in a concerted weekend effort.

Would it be such a silly thing for PPers to do?

 

[LadyArowana]

Is Feltwell Towers on the list? Impromptu PPUK Partaaaay :lol:

Not unless you all come armed with gardening tools, decorating tools, carpentry tools, plastering tools and lots of skill and enthusiasm to help me finish it off! :wink:

I'm a member of a LR club and we do "hit squads" where in return for accom, pizza and beer, club members descend to help out if major work is required on someone's vehicle in a concerted weekend effort.

Would it be such a silly thing for PPers to do?

Might be fun, although I don't think I have any of the things on Feltwell's list. I have a limited skill set, good with fiddly things like threading cables through difficult places and assembling things, like polishing, and trained in stripping wallpaper, anything else would require very close supervision :lol:

 

[Flyfisher]

Its also the Green Build Fair at Felbrigg in Norfolk this weekend

Oooh, I didn't know that but having just checked their website I think I'll go along. Thanks for that!

 

[Penners]

Is Feltwell Towers on the list? Impromptu PPUK Partaaaay :lol:

Not unless you all come armed with gardening tools, decorating tools, carpentry tools, plastering tools and lots of skill and enthusiasm to help me finish it off! :wink:

Well, if everyone else comes suitably equipped, as per your list, I'll bring the Kit-Kats.

Please note that the four-finger ones are for me.

 

[FamilyWiggs]

Is Feltwell Towers on the list? Impromptu PPUK Partaaaay :lol:

Not unless you all come armed with gardening tools, decorating tools, carpentry tools, plastering tools and lots of skill and enthusiasm to help me finish it off! :wink:

Well, if everyone else comes suitably equipped, as per your list, I'll bring the Kit-Kats.

Please note that the four-finger ones are for me.

And to think, we were all saving two fingers just for you Penners! 8)

 

[Penners]

And to think, we were all saving two fingers just for you Penners!

I think... I'm not certain, mind... that that was a derogatory remark. :?

But no, it can't be. Not from FW - surely!

 

[vicky whitworth]

Just back from visiting Higher Uppacott on Dartmoor - one of 140 Dartmoor longhouses. Excellent tour by Keith from Dartmoor National Park as part of the Heritage Open Days.

Can anyone enlighten me about 'hot lime'? He was telling us that English Heritage are doing a trial on the site. You mix quicklime with the local clay and then use it to point?

Thanks, Vicky

 

[Juju]

We've made full use of Open Heritage - a full day yesterday in Great Yarmouth and today we were escorted around the best bits of Norwich by Mr Gareth Hughes. We think it's time for another PPUK party!

Juju

 

[Penners]

Can anyone enlighten me about 'hot lime'?

I'm very far from an expert on lime, but to the best of my knowledge 'hot lime' is another name for quicklime. Mixed with water (or substances containing water) it reacts and gets very hot, as it transforms into hydrated lime (calcium oxide becomes calcium hydroxide). I have a vague memory of being told that the Romans used to make their mortar with a quicklime/wet sand mix because this avoided the need to wait while the mortar matured. But I'm overtaxing a poor understanding and a poor memory!

Hopefully somebody else with more knowledge than me will give you a clearer explanation.

 

[Gareth Hughes]

We've made full use of Open Heritage - a full day yesterday in Great Yarmouth and today we were escorted around the best bits of Norwich by Mr Gareth Hughes. We think it's time for another PPUK party!

Juju

It was a pleasure Juju, and I hope you found some more things of interest after I left you?

 

[plasticpigeon]

I think quicklime was used for making mortar into the 20th century. I have little lumps of lime in the mortar in my house built 1903. I also have a 3 volume set called " the modern bricklayer" which looks to be from the 1920s or 30s that details how to make lime mortar from quicklime slaked on site.

 

[Lime]

A group of us visited Kings Lynn yesterday.
It has many old buildings and we didn't get to see half of what was on offer.
I liked the Guidhall and the way it was used in a sensitive way where it had a modern use but had not been "bastardised" like so many old buildings I see.
The old tiles in the upper entrance floor had been grouted, cracks and all, rather than partially or completely replaced.
One solicitor's premises we visited (parts supposedly 12 century) was so bastardised it made me angry.
The building/s interior had been completely stripped of any wall covering and the stones and bricks filled/pointed with a hard mortar and then sealed.
The furniture was completely the cheap-but-expensive fibreboard type which looked so incongruous as it attempted to stand on an uneven floor.
The doors were all horrible modern (except the front door) and put where they wanted a door rather than where the structure allowed for one.
It was a typical solicitors offices with cardboard boxes and other paraphernalia flung about.
I wouldn't mind betting the staff hate the building, the ambiance was so awful.
many of the other places we visited were set out in the modern "museum-style" where the odd item is thrust at you with lots of writing around it, some attempting to be childishly humorous as if the past was funny or something.
The "officials" joked about some little houses that upto 18 children lived in the one up and one down buildings.
When we eventually got in, there must have been about 40 adults visitors and children in it so the over-crowding joke fell rather flat.
The queue to go into the underground air-raid shelter in the market square was about an hour long and stretched right round the square.
Why anyone would want to queue that long I have no idea.

 

[essexbearhunter]

As a total addict, I cram as much as I can into occasions like this. Lots of logistical planning and maps.
Friday was Queen Anne's Summerhouse in the woods at Old Warden near Biggleswade, followed by a walking tour looking at the use of building stone in Cambridge.
Saturday started at Milton Court near Dorking and a talk about the perils cleaning historic plasterwork at Regency House in Brighton.
Sunday was the real star - Bramshill House near Hook in Hampshire (holding its last open day, having been sold by the Home Office) and Royal Holloway College in Egham.

Highlights were:
1/ The Flower Room at Milton Court - a little panelled room with flowers painted on the many narrow panels . A beguilingly beautiful use of such a small space.
http://www.victorianweb.org/art/architecture/burges/2j.html

The talk by the lady gardener at Bramshill House who, with a very small team, had re-created the formal gardens and transformed the old kitchen gardens into a fully functioning and eco-friendly. The Grade 1 mansion is impressive (even with the normal furniture of a Police College in some rooms).

3/ The Chapel at Royal Holloway College. The figurative painting on the ceiling is captivating.
http://www.victorianweb.org/art/architecture/holloway/1i.html


London Open House followed last weekend and, with undiminished fervour, I got through:
68 Dean Street http://www.sixty8.com/pages/history.html
St Stephen Walbrook
Mansion House,
Draper's Hall - Magnificent ! http://mediacentre.kallaway.co.uk/pics/city-of-london-festival/hires/Brodsky-Quartet.jpg
Burlington House (including the buildings of Linnean Society, Society of Antiquaries, Astonomical Society, Royal Society of Chemists)
Painter's Hall,
Society of Apothecaries Hall
Royal Albert Hall
Colet House Studios (Talgarth Road) plus the outside of St Paul's Studios http://baldwinhamey.wordpress.com/2013/12/10/st-pauls-studios/
Burgh House, Hampstead.

Two great weekends and no real regrets - unless not being able to fit in a trip to Swarkestone to see the charming Grandstand is allowed - but I can't be in two places at once LOL http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-zgZJRJVGYuY/UpzrR4zirLI/AAAAAAAAJno/nTTQvC7hpEg/s1600/IMGP9784.jpg

 

[Penners]

EBH - you appear to have missed Glamis Castle and the Palace of Versailles off last weekend's list.

What were you thinking of?