On holiday with the Limeys
 

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Here's where we are. Well, very near here.

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We are staying in a cottage which was formerly the laundry for a large estate. It is somewhat ironic that the laundry and, indeed, the stable block, have survived where the main house hasn't. It was built at just the wrong moment, in the 1860s. Used as intended for just sixty-odd years before the advent of the First World War changed the life of the landed gentry (among others!) forever, making the house too expensive to live in. Used as a boarding school in the Second World War and later vandalised beyond redemption it just missed out on the grants that are now available to restore it to its former grandeur. (Pics being posted from phone, and narrative from iPad, hence separate posts).


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The view westwards from the cottage and a shot of the stable block.
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Very cool.

I like it. I hope it lasts like this for a long time. But these things tend to crumble.

Why do we get melancholy about grand estates, crumbling or not? Back in the day most of us would have been sleeping in the stable or laundry, a lot less comfortably than Limey is now. That's if we were allowed on the estate at all and hadn't been shipped out to the corners of the empire.

Maybe it's fascination with the posh lifestyle, and reassurance the castle will be there just in case the pumpkin turns into a coach. In my tiny home town stands a huge stone manor house, guarded by a tall stone wall and gatehouse, all built of grapefruit sized fieldstone. I still can't drive by without my imagination firing up.

Don't worry glatt, each of those stones is held in place by a ghost. ;)

Cool place.