Favourite cottage of mine, though I think I wouldn't like to live in it - very small and poky inside I should imagine. It's really a massive mid tudor chimney with the cottage built round it. I took this snapshot about this time last year. Matthew has spent the day painting the scullery (a mixture of utility room / downstairs loo). He's made a good job of it - put two coats of paint on the walls and ceiling, and gloss paint on the doors and skirting boards. He's a good worker; don't quite know what to pay him - about twenty quid, I should think, these days? No scrabble club today. Ann and I were singing in St. Mary's Choir at a wedding this afternoon. The choir fees have just been put up. We got nine pounds each, which seems generous for practising and singing three hymns and an anthem, compared to what Matthew's spent the day doing. It's a problem keeping up with monetary values these days. Perhaps we should give him a bit more? Supper's cooking; smells good; chicken I think. I'd better go up and ascertain. Might get a game of scrabble after supper, though the other two might be reluctant after last night's performance. We'll see.
3 comments:
Isn't the scullery the place where the scullions perform their scullduggery, Mike?
Thinking about it I haven't seen any scullions since just after Farmer George left the throne. (Vivat Regina.)
I think £20 is a generous sum provided board and lodgings are also provided, but if he was a paying guest you could double it without being excessive (as long as your charging him £50 a day full board?)
pootatu is being obtuse...
Pachym is her v-word, I wonder if this is the Hebrew for diminutive elephants...
The abbreviation 'Pachy' for short pachiderm and ym for the plural?
That's a lovely piece of thatchery, Mike. Good and thick, prettily pegged and trimmed as neat as can be.
Didn't the first Elizabethans love their brickwork chimneys though? I understand wealthy folk had false chimneys built just for show!
The best example of false chimneys I know are at Framlingham castle, which boasts about eleven (I think) quite superb chimneys, only one of which has ever had a fireplace under it. The castle would have been about four centuries old when the chimneys were added.
The chimney in the photographed cottage probably had a much larger house around it than the present cottage.
Cheers, Mike.
Post a Comment