Autumn Cottage Diarist

The Dark Side of Life in an Old Cottage

Most of you who have read Autumn Cottage Diarist for a few years will know that the cottage is some three hundred years old. This brings the great pleasures of living in a character home - but it also has its downside..old house equates with old window styles, and although the window in the photograph is a 1960's addition, because we are a historic 'listed' building we are required to make sure that all additions are 'in keeping' with the original house.

Though this window has an aluminium metal frame, (not much of that around in the 1700's!), the person who installed it did follow tradition in keeping to 'leaded lights' - small window panes linked and held together by lead 'cames' - strips with channels on both sides to hold the glass, similar to the much older windows we have at the front of the house.

The result of all this is that indoors can be particularly dark in most of the house - which is why the wall colour most of the way through is a buttery creamy yellow, and the new curtains are of a gauzy, transparent texture. I think they work well, though the fabric - a very open, almost net-like linen, was the very devil to work with.

The next curtains to be finished will be the much-nicer-to-sew glazed cotton for my sitting/TV room (see my last 'Snip, Snip' post) ...though since the garden is yelling for attention particularly loudly at the moment, goodness knows when they will be finished. They sit - and wait - and look pretty doing so - but there is a certain amount of reproach in their presence.

Have you got anything waiting to be finished that sits and reproaches you from the sidelines - and - the garden is my (feeble) excuse...what's yours ??  :-))

Indoors in the Garden

Hyacinths (sold off for a pound a pot in the January sales, when just about to bloom) now in full flourish. I wish I could offer 'Smellyvision' here, so you could all inhale the heady perfume!

Though we are experiencing the mildest winter we have had for years, our dear weather forecasters at the Met Office & BBC are warning us that temperatures will drop in the next couple of days - so my happy forays into the garden outside may be curbed for a while.

Strappy leaves of an orchid on the table with a number of pelargoniums taking refuge from the outside temperatures. Tender Abutilon, Olive and Lavendula stoechas on the floor - with a comfy chair and sofa placed for birdwatching (and tea-drinking!)

When that happens, I am so grateful that I have my conservatory and 'Indoor garden' to enjoy, full of houseplants and refugees from outside. Here are just a few images of my green and leafy haven in which *I* can take refuge when the weather is less than clement outdoors (and from where I can sit and watch my beloved wild birds come down to the feeders). Life is good, in the outside AND inside gardens!

Meanwhile...in the TV room/snug, Himself makes it clear that he is not interested in birdWATCHING and all the silly humans who indulge in it. He is NOT amused :-)

I-Spy Treasure at the Bottom of The Garden!

 

Hello everyone! Many weeks since I have posted here, I know. Spring has sprung at Autumn Cottage and I have been busy living life rather than writing about it - I hope you have been enjoying doing so as well! All of my days at the moment are spent in catching up with all the things that I did not do last year - a large part of which effort is consumed with attempting to conquer the dishevelled garden.

I had help there this past week - (which I will update you about soon over at Autumn Cottage Garden Safaris) from my younger son Tim, part of which entailed his clearing of the ditch at the bottom of the garden. You can see in the photographs above where the bank has been cleared of weeds.

Praise and thanks had already been given to him for the work done there (I hope to plant the boggy ditch soon with springtime bog-garden flowers such as primulas) - but while I was further admiring his work today, something buried, looking 'un-plant-y' caught my eye...

'X' marks the spot in the image above where I espied some sort of rim in the ground...('Y' indicates my trowel handle, stuck in the ground, for size comparison). As you can imagine, the trowel got busy once I saw what might be buried there! The soil was loose and came away easily, revealing this lovely pot-sherd: made in soft terracotta, wheel thrown and decorated with a hand-scratched pattern below the rim. As you can also see, it is quite a size - about nine inches long against the one-foot ruler.

The glazed inside of the pot

The curve on the sherd shows just how big it must have been when intact - I matched it to the manhole cover on a drain in the garden - it was almost of the same curvature - and the manhole cover is 30 inches in diameter - quite some pot!

I suspect the pot to have been a shallow dough mixing/proving bowl from a Victorian kitchen here at the cottage, but cannot be sure. Any archaeologists reading this? Your opinion would be more than welcome - but I think I need to to take a visit to a museum to get this properly identified.

I-Spy Amongst the Artefacts

Terracotta pottery fragments from the garden

Many of you will know that I live on the margin of Highclere Park, within which is situated Highclere Castle. The castle has appeared in many films & TV programmes in the past ('Eyes Wide Shut'...'Jeeves & Wooster') - but at the moment it will be known to anyone who has been/is watching 'Downton Abbey' - as it is the main filming location for this entertaining series.

Autumn Cottage was, up until the 1960's, one of the  cottages belonging to the Highclere Estate, with the inhabitants either working at, or being otherwise associated with 'The Castle' - and nowhere is this more visible than amongst the artefacts that I have dug up in, or found on the surface of the garden over the last 25 years. All the little bits of pottery and china, glass and metal give a far more evocative account of those who have lived here than mere words are able to do.

Sponge and transfer printed, handpainted, blown, moulded...pipes and pots, bottles, bowls and inkwells, buttons and teacups...the debris of life at Autumn Cottage

In picture 1 you will see pieces of humble pottery for day-to-day use, such as would be expected in cottages of this stature and age...but if you look in image 2, you will see also a fine array of china which is much more 'posh' - fragments of Chelsea tea-bowls, oriental decorated wares, much ornamented blue and white ware, mixed in with items of more lowly origin. This tells a story, to me, of people in service 'up at the Castle' who may have been given the odd chipped cup or plate, in preference to it being thrown on the rubbish dump when there was still 'a bit of use' left in it. (How I'd love to find that Castle rubbish dump and dig my way through it - I am sure there must be at least one there somewhere!). Can you imagine a maid or farm worker coming home with a pretty plate or cup, admiring it, getting pleasure from it, putting it on the dresser to enjoy it? I can imagine just such a thing - why, I continue a similar tradition every time I come back from the Antiques Arcade!

When doing some restoration work in my hall a few years ago, I found fragments of rather beautiful wallpaper, hand blocked with a fleur-de-lys pattern - yet another discard, I suspect, from the Big House. Recycling has been alive and well in Highclere for a couple of centuries at least...and I have boxes and boxes of artefacts to prove it!

Take a browse through these bits and pieces and see how many different items you can spot - imagine how they were used and by whom, 'Upstairs'? or 'Downstairs'? and if you are wondering about some of them, please leave a comment to ask...If I know more, I'll share it with you.

Christmas Decorating at Autumn Cottage

18th Century fireplace in the small sitting room - Scandinavian nisse cavorting on the mantelpiece

Busy, busy - it's that time of the year - so I'm just sharing pictures and not a lot of words today, of the decorations as they go up here at the cottage. Greetings of the season to all of you - I'm feeling festive already!

Red glass tealight holders beneath my favorite picture

Ceramic pyramid with box sprigs..(and oh, how I would love to fill the whole house with pyramids in the style of Old Williamsburg!)

Poinsettias = instant Christmas!

Green Man in his Yule finery

Sugar Frosted Countryside

This is the delicate result of two days freezing fog ...just a dusting of frost left on the garden at midday - but the trees catching the fog at higher levels and, at -2C, freezing into layers of delicate crystals.

In the herb garden, a couple of milder days over the weekend allowed one of the ponds to thaw slightly - enough to capture the footprints of the pheasants which have obviously taken a stroll over the surface, before freezing again.
Taking a drive cross-country to Hungerford this afternoon, the effect was multiplied by many thousands of times - and enhanced by every field and hedgerow similarly embellished - sparking against the still, mysterious fog which continues to hang in the air. Truly beautiful - but unfortunately only in my mind's eye now -  I forgot to take my camera - so here is a little more of the winter wonderland at the bottom of the garden here at Autumn Cottage.

Advent, Trees and Memories

I always think that these early weeks of Advent are the best part of the Christmas period...time to think, and to remember, and to savour, before the inevitable speeding up of 'things to do' before the arrival of Christmas day itself. Every year I get out these five little lightbulbs, intending to put them on display - to Do Something' with them...and each year I put them away again, feeling that I have nowhere special or safe enough to show them. They are not family heirlooms - they are junk shop acquisitions, made in the 1930's-40's, hand-painted, bought fifteen or so years ago.
But like family memories, they are special because they speak of one of my own passions, to rescue, restore and enjoy things that would otherwise have been discarded. As lightbulbs, they were long ago defunct - but as tree ornaments, don't you think they would be cute? For that is how I have decided to display them - wrapping brass wire around those screw fittings, and hanging them on a special, small tree dedicated to vintage and antique finds and possessions from my own history.

The three little items above fall into that category -  they are from my own past; cake top ornaments, made of painted plaster, which used to adorn the Christmas cake at home for as far back as I remember - so at least to the early 1950's. (Made by my mother, of course, none of this 'shop bought stuff' would have been allowed into the house). Like the lightbulbs, they will also get fine wires attached, to hang on one of several mini trees dressed in a single theme that will be plasced around the house.

So - as it is the time for gathering memories of Christmases past - what do *you* remember about your own Christmas tree times - ones with which you had joyful adventures obtaining and trimming - even those with which you experienced disasters! Tell me some of your stories of those trees - and the people around them - that are special to you in your memories....

Three Beautiful Boys in the Snow

Three cock pheasants come to lunch

They were there when I got up at 7.30...popped in on several occasions during the morning, and have now just left for the cover of the bushes when they spotted me with my camera. Not a competition winning shot...but evidence that these often stroppy males can get along together when food is in short supply. The story will be different after Christmas, when they seek to impress their wives!

Two other regular visitors to the feeder each morning...the ever present little Blue-tits, and a solitary Pied Wagtail, which pops down and immediately takes its fodder up onto the conservatory roof. Entertainment of the highest pleasure, all while I enjoy a cuppa. Lucky me!

  Blue-tit

Pied Wagtail

Mother Nature's Rhinestones

  Rose hips

No sunshine today...bitterly cold, overcast, miserable. But still...frostings and crustings of ice crystals everywhere in the garden...lovely.

Hellebore and cotoneaster

Alchemilla

Holly

Thistle, oak and beech

 

There's a Hole in my Bucket...

The old Privy

Four, actually. Prompted by the imminent arrival of the septic tank emptier on his annual visit, I thought you may be interested to see how the process was 'handled' in the not-that distant past here at Autumn Cottage.The previous owner of the cottage was, back in the 1950's, the  Head Mistress of one of the local village schools - very much a contemporary of 'Miss Read' - who also lived not far away. She told me the story of how she had come to the village from the city, and was one day regaled by the chortles of the schoolchildren, who announced that the Lavender Cart had overturned in the village. Bewildered, she had to enquire what such a cart may be? and was patiently enlightened by a seven year old that said cart was actually that used to remove excess night soil from the houses around about - given the name of 'Lavender Cart' in allusion to its pervasive perfume!

I wonder if a similar cart visited Autumn Cottage? - maybe to take away excess 'fertiliser'... if so, here is an example of what would have been emptied onto it, which has been stored away amongst other garden paraphernalia here for a long time. It is what I have only recently realised is probably the original soil bucket which would have been placed beneath a wooden seat in the  brick privy, which still stands here in the garden.

Methinks, though, that scattered cottages like this were more likely to retain much of this product - perhaps tipping it into a soil pit to rot down and add to the other forms of compost that would have then been returned to the earth to maintain the high fertility responsible for the abundance of vegetables, fruit and flowers seen in so many images of the Victorian cottage garden. It is said that in many old habitations in country and town, that the most wonderful tomatoes were those grown behind 'the little garden house'!

I'm ashamed to say that I pierced four holes in the bucket and used it as a planter when I first discovered it, thinking it just a common old bucket, discarded under a tree when we acquired 'the house next door' fifteen years ago. But since rediscovering it and noticing it's unusual shape, wide-topped and with two side-handles for greater ease of emptying, I am sure that it is more unusual - almost certainly the bucket that belongs to the privy, and definitely to be treated with more respect than I have done up to now.

Mea culpa - time to make amends and take greater care of a little bit of history. The old privy is now used here to store day-to-day garden hand tools - though my neighbour has restored hers to its original state. Along with the house, the privy is a Listed Building, and in the major clear-up and re-assessment which is going on here at the cottage at present, I'm minded to think that further restoration of our own 'Lavender Bower' may not be in order as well? It is just a precious a piece of history as the grand houses round about, and indeed more at risk of disappearing for good if it is not valued by ourselves. Watch this Space for developments in  Lavender land!

On a sweeter note, below are two visitors to the garden this morning purely for your pleasure...a Great Tit gobbling peanuts from the new feeding station,

and the elegant but aggressive Nuthatch which sees off any other visitors to the food. Never mind....there's enough for all - unless the squirrel decides to visit...but that is another story for another day.

Happy Monday, everyone - may you walk in beauty - even though you may be surrounded by Lavender !