I found this photo in a pile of other hard-copy photos when I was looking for something else. That is how I find most things these days - weeks, months or years after I have given up looking for them.
It is the back wall of the grotto of Bowden Park, near Lacock, which was rebuilt by me for Lord Weinstock after it was destroyed in the great storm of 1980-something.
The sunlight is being filtered through the stained glass of the Strawberry Hill Gothic doors, illuminating the massive lumps of plundered stalagmite and enormous ammonites set into the floor. I spent months in this place.
I really enjoy working in interesting and unusual places. It is wonderful to get to know them intimately and be paid for the privilege. Over the years I have spent long periods of time in places which people travel long distances to visit. You leave a part of yourself behind which stays forever, even if you leave no detectable trace of it. You feel proprietorial or even protective about those places, which can be very irritating to tour guides if you join their group and contribute to their talk. I can never keep my mouth shut if I hear someone talking bollocks about somewhere I know well.
When I spent three years/summers with the touring theatre company, it was wonderful to rock up to a beautiful medieval town in Europe and dive straight into the heart of it as soon as getting out of the van. In the space of an hour, we would be briefed on many local details which would normally take at least a year of residence to find out for ourselves.
In the first day, we learned from local politicians and administrators all the little conflicts and idiosyncrasies which made up the social life of the town, as well as being given a potted history of the venue at which we were to perform. We needed to know this stuff, and not just out of interest.
From then on, we would be greeted in the street by mayors and councillors as one of their honorary own. We would get drunk in bars with them. We belonged from the very start.
I miss not being a civilian.
I know what you mean about ownership. At times I've looked at photos and feel an immediate kinship with the place because I have been there. The land imprints on me, too, and I carry it in my heart.
ReplyDeleteSometimes we share particular places with others who we have been there with in the past. If H.I. ever kicked the bucket before me, I could not bring myself to go back to places like Venice without her. I would rather stay at home.
DeleteThe Great Storm was in 1987.
ReplyDeleteWhen you say Strawberry Hill Gothic doors, do you mean in the style of Strawberry Hill house ? I love Strawberry Hill house. Lovely work.... it must be so difficult to make it look like you had never been there ? XXXX
Yes, in the style of the house. My job in restoration is to make it look like nothing ever happened. I used icing-sugar piping bags on the mortar fill-ins, then tinted the mortar green, as if with algae. I have to say that I am very good at covering my tracks.
DeleteI've become better at keeping my mouth shut, or maybe I don't be around as much anymore. How it used to irritate me to see reenactment villages where the employees didn't have the courtesy to say they knew nothing about what they were demonstrating, from weaving to throwing pottery.
ReplyDeleteYes! Reenactment villages can be embarrassing. I was once asked to pretend to be a stonemason in a disused quarry by doing stonemasonry in a cage. The deal was that I would have rent-free workshop space. I declined.
DeletePlaces... time... going back to - or never be allowed to enter them again: I see houses I have lived in for many years - then moved - now they are impenetrable past. On the other hand they are in my head and my heart.
ReplyDeleteVivid. Colourful. Sometimes heartbreaking.
Letting go - a very difficult lesson.
I still dream of my family home.
DeleteThere will be places I can never go again without weeping and the realisation I must move on to different places to shake the past away. But if I was to go abroad, Vezelay and Carcassone would be my medieval treats.
ReplyDeleteCarcassone seems like a dream anyway, with its Disney castle.
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