Sunset through the arch

fantastic shot

Beautiful photo Spritz

Now that is lovely .!

Beautiful sky.....we had the same colours Spritz...I looked out at the newly positioned Xmas tree in the square and these colours were behind!

Ohhh lovely! I think it should be a rule of construction that all houses must have a western view!! lol.

Janey - I haven't started thinking about Christmas yet...I'll have to very soon, won't I?

Lori - one of the questions we asked about the house when we were looking at it was which direction the garden/s faced! ( they wrap round three sides of the house). It's definitely a good orientation. I wonder if the people who built it 500 years ago made a conscious decision to build it that way round?

I would say yes, they knew the value of sun on masonry...I've seen pics of your wall from various photos... is it/was it part of a par terre? I marvel...500 year old architecture... There is so much to learn about gardening..as well as about plants...and our spot on the globe...if we stopped to think about the size of the body of knowledge required we would probably never start!...we're hearing of new discoveries and the endless "re -categorization" that goes on...but no one seems to remember that these plants came down to us from our ancestors and survived without our help for milennia...we can afford to let nature have it's head once in a while!

No, the house was built by a Yeoman farmer in the early 1500's.. It would have had outbuildings and an attached barn. We now know that in 1608 when the owner died, he left the house to his daughter as he had no sons. When she died, she left it to her three daughters and it was then that the house was altered into three cottages.

Some time later, it was altered again into two, as it is today. The barn is long gone - we guess that the lumps of stone that I often dig up came from it. We do have the original stable, though - now used as a logshed and tool store. The people who renovated it about 25 years ago built the walls around the garden, probably also from old stonework left from the outbuildings.

I like the walls - I wish they had walled the whole garden! Some is fenced, though.

The garden back then would not have been at all ornamental, of course, it would have had veggies and herbs, maybe a pig or two, chickens etc near the house - and then a large area of fields for their animals and arable use - these were sold off around 1900.

I think that's what I want to find when I come to England and Italy...I want to find the historical link...to look at architecture and landscape that was seen by Roman eyes! How wonderful it is that you have a deed that goes back to Plantagenet and Tudor time. Want to see Bath, Londinium, Lewes, Brighton, Hastings...the Saxon shore..the Channel Islands ...South West (Angevin) France .the Alps, Venice, Florence, Rome, Naples (Herculaneum) and Sardinia, Sicily and Corsica...just for a start!