Thursday.

Yesterday was a very busy day. Early Service as per usual on Wednesday. Then, late morning to a friend's  new house in the area (although the 'new' is a misleading adjective in this case), where we'd been asked  to make sure that two of the clocks very recently put up in the house were 'in beat' and happy (the one above is rather a lovely, locally made long case clock of about 1730). Next we were to  see the new home, then have lunch with them. The one drawback was that we had to be back in Highdale well before 3 o'clock, when the funeral of a friend was to take place. In fact when we first received the lunch invitation, we felt we had to refuse it to be back in time for the funeral. Angela immediately (and very decently) offered to make sure that the lunch was held rather earlier than is usual in order that we could get back to Highfield in time for the funeral. So we accepted gratefully. In fact both clocks needed very little attention, so we were then given a tour of the house. It is a lovely home, built (at different periods from the 14th to the early sixteenth century) around four sides of a court yard.

Above is shown one side of the courtyard, built in the late 1400s.

 Above is a close-up of carvings on the beams, taken from the same position as the previous photo. It is odd to think that the carving was completely covered with plaster for a century or so, being uncovered around 1905, and the richness of the old carvings again revealed.

Above photo shows the opposite side of the same courtyard.  Angela was as good as her word, and was insistent that we return for a better look when, (a) we have more time for a proper look at the place, and (b) when it is more completely  furnished.  I look forward immensely to our return visit, as it's a magnificent, un-got at and  complete early home, even for this area.
Got back nicely in time for the funeral, tead afterwards in Saint Mary's, home again and changed me tie yet again in time to go out to a Lent discussion group that's taking place in the run up to Easter. We got home from that at about nine thirty,  and were both quite glad to hit the sack shortly afterwards. We both slept well.