WE thought we had bought an 18th- century house’, says one home-owner of his pretty, Grade listed, thatched cottage in countryfied southern England, ‘but were taken aback to find out our garden wall was once the end of a Victorian latrine.’ Recent research on his property acquired more than 15 years ago, uncovered an unlikely provenance—a compelling snippet of social history, not as a polite Georgian abode, but as one-time Poor Law Union lodgings, home to paupers crammed into a crude, rubble construction and set to work as laborers. The site was almost completely rebuilt in the mid 19th century and remodeled in modern times—unacknowledged in its formal listed-building description maintained by Historic England and apparently not referred to in sale details.
Occasional errors or omissions in the understanding of a house’s history are more likely to crop up when the investigation is prompted, often for planning purposes and listed building consent. However, the confidence that owners and potential buyers should have informal descriptions found in the National Heritage List for England or histories supplied with particulars, and what they can do about inaccuracies, is not always clear and appears to be legally untested. List entries, often written up as cursory details in older versions yet to be updated, are not meant to be meticulously detailed accounts.
Denne historien er fra June 02, 2021-utgaven av Country Life UK.
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Denne historien er fra June 02, 2021-utgaven av Country Life UK.
Start din 7-dagers gratis prøveperiode på Magzter GOLD for å få tilgang til tusenvis av utvalgte premiumhistorier og 9000+ magasiner og aviser.
Allerede abonnent? Logg på
Save our family farms
IT Tremains to be seen whether the Government will listen to the more than 20,000 farming people who thronged Whitehall in central London on November 19 to protest against changes to inheritance tax that could destroy countless family farms, but the impact of the good-hearted, sombre crowds was immediate and positive.
A very good dog
THE Spanish Pointer (1766–68) by Stubbs, a landmark painting in that it is the artist’s first depiction of a dog, has only been exhibited once in the 250 years since it was painted.
The great astral sneeze
Aurora Borealis, linked to celestial reindeer, firefoxes and assassinations, is one of Nature's most mesmerising, if fickle displays and has made headlines this year. Harry Pearson finds out why
'What a good boy am I'
We think of them as the stuff of childhood, but nursery rhymes such as Little Jack Horner tell tales of decidedly adult carryings-on, discovers Ian Morton
Forever a chorister
The music-and way of living-of the cabaret performer Kit Hesketh-Harvey was rooted in his upbringing as a cathedral chorister, as his sister, Sarah Sands, discovered after his death
Best of British
In this collection of short (5,000-6,000-word) pen portraits, writes the author, 'I wanted to present a number of \"Great British Commanders\" as individuals; not because I am a devotee of the \"great man, or woman, school of history\", but simply because the task is interesting.' It is, and so are Michael Clarke's choices.
Old habits die hard
Once an antique dealer, always an antique dealer, even well into retirement age, as a crop of interesting sales past and future proves
It takes the biscuit
Biscuit tins, with their whimsical shapes and delightful motifs, spark nostalgic memories of grandmother's sweet tea, but they are a remarkably recent invention. Matthew Dennison pays tribute to the ingenious Victorians who devised them
It's always darkest before the dawn
After witnessing a particularly lacklustre and insipid dawn on a leaden November day, John Lewis-Stempel takes solace in the fleeting appearance of a rare black fox and a kestrel in hot pursuit of a pipistrelle bat
Tarrying in the mulberry shade
On a visit to the Gainsborough Museum in Sudbury, Suffolk, in August, I lost my husband for half an hour and began to get nervous. Fortunately, an attendant had spotted him vanishing under the cloak of the old mulberry tree in the garden.
