String bags and geraniums

[Nemesis]

Shallots, too. Did I mention the shallots?

Important that the bags have small holes or the shallots may fall through.

Middi - take the fag out of your mouth, it's making your speech indistinct. Just like David's.

 

[Penners]

Shallots, too. Did I mention the shallots?

Oh no....

 

[Nemesis]

The leeks, however, are doing fine in the ground. They don't neeed string bags.

Then there's the Borlotti crop...

 

[sarahj]

I've just found a knitting pattern where you cut up your spare carrier bags and knit them into a carrier bag :?

 

[Moo]

I know this is all good, clean fun. But what does it have to do with period properties?

 

[Nemesis]

Septic tanks, which many period property owners have, eco living and a source of appropriate cleaning materials for a healthy septic tank, period property gardens.

Mine's a period property with a bit of land and we use it to grow food, such as onions. Which we store in our very period property pantry, in string bags.

I think all are connected with period property.

http://www.hull.ac.uk/oldlib/archives/paragon/1998/garden.html

http://www.englishplants.co.uk/cottage.html

 

[plumbers mate]

Period properties are not all town houses with back yards and yard wide strips of soil surrounded by privet at the front. Some have period gardens which are as relevant to the history of the building as are the stone and lime from which the building is created.

 

[Nemesis]

Our immediate plot of land is an enclosure which is pre the late 18th c Enclosure Act - the house was built on it at the end of the 18th c. How far it goes back as an enclosure I have yet to find out, via manorial and other records.

The land, we think, was used as a means of bringing in stock from the surrounding common grazing at night to prevent rustling by Border Reivers. It's next to a watercourse, which would have been useful. This is also part of an old drove route.

The house to which the land belonged was nearby, but the residents built this one and moved in and other members of the family seemed to remain in the original. It would have in all probability been of rough stone with a ling thatch.

That in turn (called the Black House) was demolished and 'improved' in the 19th century. The datestone 1673 is incorporated into the 19th c extension to our house.

The adjacent bit of land was awarded as part of the 1783/4 Enclosure of Common Land. It eventually became part of this property.

The house incorporates a 19th century privy and a pigsty.