ANOTHER UNEXPECTED GUEST - Sept 2013

Our nearest neighbours in both directions live across a couple of fields, one is a two minute walk via the road, the other 15 minutes including a trek up a steep muddy track. A quicker route to the latter is across the fields through our newly repaired side gate.

 

On a recent visit to this neighbour, I met a man who lived in our house as a child during the 70s. He told me that his parents converted the house back to living accommodation after it had spent many years housing cattle. He remembered a donkey living in what is now our lounge. His family knocked through something like 13 fireplaces before managing to expose what we assume is the original inglenook fireplace, now housing our log burner.

A week later, as I was about to go through the gate to visit the same neighbour, an unfamiliar couple strolled up the drive. The man told me he used to own our house in the 80s. It transpired that he bought it from the family of the man I had met the previous week. As I showed him around his old home, myths I had created in my mind quickly morphed into the not-so-romantic-reality.

I had read that centuries ago, people in poor Welsh houses used rocks as furniture. I had therefore convinced myself that a stone jutting out of a wall at an annoying shin height (fondly known as the 'Cerys Seat' - named after my 3 year old niece who likes to sit on it) is a centuries old seat. I often pondered over the thought that in days gone by, many a Welsh bottom could have perched on that rock whilst chewing on a goat shank!

My visitor put me right. He had exposed the stone in the 1980s, while opening up a doorway in the thick stone wall!  :(

The Cerys Seat

I also assumed that a stone pond in our 'courtyard' was centuries old. I now discovered that it was made from the stones taken from said doorway. Pah!

Pond now housing plants

In raising a roof last year, an old beam was removed. In order to keep it on view, we re-used it to hold up the stairs and to minimise the bouncing of the upstairs floorboards. I told my visitor of this and he informed me that he had originally put the beam in the house and that it had originated from the old granite crushing building after it closed following the closure of the quarries. My myths, like the granite, were further crushed.

Apparently the neighbours also have a beam from the same crushing building.

And what of this 18 inch high milepost/tombstone lurking in the corner of the kitchen?

I forgot to ask! I'm free to dream. There is nobody here to tell me otherwise. My (very nice) visitor lives far away in Mexico and is unlikely to return for a very long time - if ever again!

Next blog - Another visit to the neighbours?