We just can't stop moving!

One thing I've always hated about websites is how they keep moving. But now I'm having to eat humble pie as I've come to view blogspot as more of a chore - like a job you have to do at midnight, handcuffed, with a bag on your head. And so as I didn't fancy a career as a British politician, we've found a new more user-friendly home...

Come on over! We're having a blog warming and you're all invited at:

domusrenovatio.wordpress.com

BTW: This old site will be up for auction pretty soon. But I might just tart it up a bit first with some polyfilla...

11. Textures - a study

10. Time Team

It's fascinating how history oscillates in and out of fashion as it slides out from under the present in a thin sheen like the trail of a universal snail. Too recent and it's simply not history, too ancient and it's closer to fantasy, but in the middle there are pockets of interest which ebb and flow as the rolling generations forget and then remember again in bursts of excited novelty.

Architecture, like music and fashion, follows this pattern perfectly; I remember declaring with my brother in 1980 that we'd never ever wear flares again - a promise we upheld resolutely until the 90's when the youth rediscovered them with a flourish and I, suddenly struggling with not being the youth anymore, opted for a probably very cleverly marketed "boot cut". I think the 80's were an exception as we all knew we looked stupid at the time, but it hasn't stopped those young enough to be spared the scars of fashion to have decided to give it another airing. But the trendsetters don't go about in togas, ruffs or pharaoh's hats so what defines this sweet spot?

More importantly, how do we know if we are living in, even creating one now? Will we be remembered and revered for our cultural genius and have our edifices preserved and emulated? Will we have an stylistic era named after us? Or are we the null and void filler between more interesting times in a footnote on the page that people flick over. A historical tea break.

"Time team!"

This is the cry that punctures the long hours of our toil full of disdain for those unloved eras while we purge the house of the "wrong stuff". Scraping off glue, digging out bog, unscrewing asbestos, pulling off plastic, prying out melamine, laughing at lino. Shaking our heads, mutterings of "criminal" and "why...?".

But who gives us the power and the right to decide what is in and what's out? It's the paradox of conservation of any evolutionary design. These things are meant to change and absorb the zeitgeist of the era, wart's and all, layer by layer - but surely we can't just sit back and watch these icons destroyed and our inheritance betrayed?!  It's where hippies bump into fascists round the back of the cyclical spectrum of control-freakery and then shockingly realise their goals have converged. 

"Time team!"

It's our cry of the sign of the silver in the clouds of dust of forgettable years. The years when the craft left the men and the women lost their taste or perhaps just their choice. Things are made quickly, stuck on badly, rendered irreparable. When did we forget that these things would represent us for hundreds if not thousands of years to come?

Things as simple as this tile, found perched on a rafter as if someone had just placed it there for a moment. "Time team", I shout from my attic haven and Gen come's running from the garden (hers). We feel like the house is telling us what it wants to be.

And this, this is pretty retro - but is it culture yet!? Oh I'm so confused...

These were found in the cellar and in the attic, a glimpse into someone's hobbies?

This 1960 plan appears to be for the hardboard "repairs" to the rotten floorboards in one of the rooms, but we're not too sure what or where the Wall of Friendship might be?

Ah great, I was about to ask how the team was going...

Of course if you visit us for dinner, bring your best clothes and your best dust mask and logon to our attic for a quick gamble with Batt Roulette. 

"Pick a batt - any batt!"

I want that one!

What could it be?

Music!

Avoiding the clouds of choking black dust that coats antiquity.

We've noticed we've been finding a strange combination of political, romantic and religious books ranging from 1850 to the early C20th. This one "How the Pope Became a King" seems to be Jesuit missionary propaganda from 1851 = snip at 1d.

Is this poem bemoaning the Federation?

This one is far more fanciful.

We found these two poems carefully tucked away in the best find so far: this lovely old book which we have only gently teased open as it's in fairly sorry state, folded in half and half eaten by a variety of passing admirers.

Inside there are beautiful architectural plans and sketches of arches and rooflines, some looking distinctly churchy.

Along with many of these cardboard templates, which appear to be for a woodworker or stonemason.

"Stonemason?!" says Genevieve excitedly. "Perhaps it's the stonemason who originally lived here! What was his name...?" She went off and tried to find the name, curiously enough, in a local council rambler's guide to the area which contains the most history we've found on the cottage so far. I began examining the front cover in more detail.

I thought I could see the word Bank, which was possibly part of the address?

Meales? Mules?

Then suddenly I saw on the side, what appeared to be a name plate:

Written in beautiful cursive, I read it out loud slowly as I struggled to make out the words "Mr ... John ... Hepburn!" That's him Gen exlaimed stabbing a finger at the council guide. Mr Hepburn was the stonemason who bought the newly built house in 1878 and lived here till his death in 1932. And here we were holding possibly his last book of unfinished plans.

Now that's real history, no argument!