Husky Hall

Digging away at the back of the house

Sat, 20 Nov 2010 16:55:27 GMT

In the late summer of 2010 we started digging our way round the back of the conservatory. Here's the start of the excavations

To the left of the trench is an old wall embedded in the ground which must have been the end wall of the range of outbuildings once upon a time. You can't quite make it out in the picture.

But you can see it in this one:

Here the excavations are progressing round the back of the house. You can also see that the conservatory is being used as a log store. Chiseling logs off a frozen woodpile last winter was a chore, so a few have been brought indoors. The ground is all broken up here and has clearly been extensively quarried. There are one or two bits of bedrock in situ, but most of it is broken stone.

Here's the hole taken a little deeper. You can see how wet the ground is

We've more or less run out of places to hide spoil under the bushes, so we're using this lot to build up the hardstanding area by the garage.

The Land Rover makes a superb garden roller to press it all down.

Here are the excavations again. The retaining wall is going in. The remains of the old wall are stacked against the conservatory and will be re-laid where the new footings are.

In 2011 the digging started again. Here you can see some foundations going in the corner. Like many foundations in the Husky Hall project, they represent a way of getting rid of bits of masonry and rubble

The baulks of bedrock which have been left by the people who originally quarried this area represent conveniently sized bays that divide up the job. Here's the second bay dug out down to the remaining bedrock.

Here are the foundations in place:

The quarrying waste which makes up most of the spoil we are removing contains a few fragments of pottery. If we knew about such things, we could tell how long ago it was that those piles of quarry waste were put there. However, a few clues have been furnished by the archaeology programme Time Team. A dig in Shropshire identified some bits of pottery like the brown and cream ware in the picture as moulded slip ware from the late 18th century. This would fit in with what we believe about the older part of the present house - that it originated in the late 18th or early 19th century. The people working on it obligingly smashed their crockery into the excavations for us. Which was pretty altruistic of them when you consider how expensive and hard to come by it must have been on a labourer's wages in those days.

Scaffolding Tower

Mon, 28 Jun 2010 17:34:21 GMT

On June 25th a secondhand scaffolding tower arrived. Here are Hogan and Alex assembling it:

And here's Alex and me a bit further up:

Here is the sort of thing that we can get at with it:

The chimney's in reasonably good condition fortunately. Here's the extension seen from the top platform:

Update on the trees and bushes

Mon, 28 Jun 2010 17:09:56 GMT

In the autumn we transplanted a number of trees and bushes. You can see them a few entries ago in a post entitled 'Moving Bushes'. Here's an update. They seem to have survived and some are flourishing.

Here's the oak

It's got some grass clippings round the base to suppress weeds and retain moisture, and it has a lot of leaves and is doing well. Here's a hebe

The bare twigs are now covered in tiny leaves, so this looks like it's OK.

Here's the birch:

It has suffered a bit, but it has come into leaf so there's hope for it. Once again, grass clippings provide the mulch. When it is fully in leaf it will shade out any vegetation underneath. Finally, here are some bushes which I moved just before Christmas. They were in a place where a new extension will be built, so I moved them to the fence at the western side of the garden. They're looking very lush. The only thing that hasn't worked out are the rose bushes whose bark was eaten by rabbits. Even so, there are a few new shoots on them and a recovery is in sight.

Here's a view of the garden looking westwards from the scaffolding tower:

And here's a view looking east:

Everything's looking very lush and leafy, basking in the early summer sunshine. You can contrast this with a picture in the very earliest entry entitled 'view down the drive' taken from the roof of the house. The position is more or less the same, but look how things have grown. You can scarcely see the garage now.

Drains

Wed, 17 Mar 2010 17:39:10 GMT

There needs to be some work on the drains. They don't extend round the back of the house. The kitchen sink drained into a gully that didn't go anywhere and was getting smelly. The drains need to go round the back, in order to serve the utility room, the new downstairs bathroom which will be installed, and the new kitchen which will be installed in the extension. The existing ones are very shallow - not surprising for a house built directly on the bedrock. So we need to deepen them, to give us sufficient fall to get to the back of the house with some hope that the water will run away. Here's the existing pipe exposed.

Fortunately, we can gain a bit more depth at the house end by deepening the trench. There'll still be the recommended 1:40 slope but we'll gain the best part of a foot at the house. Then we can run a pipe under the existing utility room and round to the back, and it will still be below floor level.

Here's a box of goodies from Drain Depot Very reasonable prices and next day delivery. Point, click and install.

Here's the utility room prior to digging a trench through it:

And here's the trench in progress

Once again the Erbauer demolition hammer came in handy. It's still going strong. The chisel is getting a bit rounded over now, but it's still rattling its way through the bedrock. The utility room floor has been laid over an earlier doorstep and drainage channel.

Here's the new cover and inspection chamber

Here is the new junction and rest bend for the existing bathroom soil pipe. To the right of the new plastic pipes you can just see the old earthenware drain that had been smashed during previous excavations. This used to serve the kitchen sink, among other things. No wonder it always seemed to be blocked.

The pipes are a good deal lower in the ground than the earlier ones. Clearly the previous installers didn't have the benefit of a pneumatic drill or demolition hammer.

Here's the new gully and inspection chamber base at the back of the house:

You can see how wet the ground is. All that water lives between the layers of the Ludlovian shale, just waiting for a chance to ooze out.

Here's the drain going under the utility room. There's a spur for us to fit a floor drain in the utility room later.

In goes the concrete around the gully and inspection chamber:

And around the new join at the front of the house:

Here's the new cover in position and the concrete smoothed off:

That white pipe is from the kitchen sink. This now finally drains into a proper drain and goes to the septic tank like it's supposed to. We can put pretty much whatever we like down the sink now and it will get into the septic tank where it belongs. We've tested it with both the toilet and the kitchen sink and everything speeds through the pipes very well indeed.

Finally, making good the path at the front of the house. The existing concrete wasn't very picturesque so we've dug the whole lot up and laid crazy paving instead.

Here it ias a littler later with the path more finished off and a small retaining wall going in around the grass and bushes.

And here's the wall from the other end. That coping with stones set on edge will extend all the way along eventually.

Here's the coping finished off. It goes all the way along to the end and round the corner.

And here it is from the other end showing how the coping stones go round the corner.

Finally, here's the floor drain. It's mounted slightly proud of the floor to accommodate the thickness of the tiles.

Wiring

Wed, 17 Mar 2010 09:04:21 GMT

In the spring of 2010 we started on the wiring. This is because the current arrangements do not meet contemporary standards and there are some scary aspects where accessories have deteriorated because of the damp. Moreover, some of the rooms will be used for different purposes. The porch is going to be a utility room, so it will need a ring main. The kitchen is going to be a downstairs bathroom, so won't need any sockets - just as well as many of the existing ones are getting dangerous and the kitchen will be in what is now the dining room. So that'll want a ring main of its own. Additionally, the existing fusebox has a few faults. Whoever wired Husky Hall originally had clearly never come across the idea of a ring main and everything seems to be on a radial or spur system. This means that each fuse terminal is stuffed with many wires, all leading to different things.

The item on the far right is a new RCD unit to supply the sheds which we put in a couple of years ago. It has its own feed from the meter cabinet. The small box is an example of the type of thing that you see a lot of at Husky Hall. Small, supernumerary fuseboxes powered by leads stuffed into the main switch terminals of the old fusebox. It's all coming out and will be replaced by a modern device with miniature circuit breakers.

Here's the new one going in

It looks very congested, but eventually most of those red and black wires will be replaced by three ring mains and things will be a whole lot simpler.

When it's finished it will look even tidier because the extraneous wires in the top left will be eliminated. The black outdoor cable along the bottom which goes to the shed will be clipped so it's horizontal.

Moving bushes

Wed, 17 Mar 2010 08:12:15 GMT

This post details a job we did in the autumn of 2009. There was a bed in the middle of the driveway with some bushes in it and a small birch tree. The idea was, I suppose, that it was like a carriage sweep, but unless you had a very small car, it was impossible to get round in one go. Everything was a little too small. So we decided to move them all. Here's what it looked like before:

Here they are after they were moved. I hope they like it in their new home. I managed to get a reasonable amount of root out with them, so they have every chance. At the time of writing (March 2010) they've still not come into leaf, but it's been a very hard winter. I keep looking at them and the twigs are still green, so they might be OK.

And here's the empty space where they were. We'll need that extra space when the extension gets built.

This weekend we acquired an oak tree. There aren't any oaks on the premises apart from this one, so we planted it carefully and are keeping our fingers crossed in the hope that it survives.

Mysterious package September 2009

Thu, 28 Jan 2010 21:41:34 GMT

It’s Friday the 4th of September 2009. A mysterious package has arrived. It’s on a double width pallet and is well packed with polythene and cardboard.

Here it is unwrapped. A brand new ride on mower. Started first time too. You can see the new mown grass stuck to the tyres.

It comes with a host of luxuries, such as lights which come on automatically when it gets dark, an electric starter, a cute little battery charger which would look more at home charging a mobile phone and a thing that bleeps when the grass box is full.

Here it is at the gate.

Although only 2 wheel drive it seems perfectly capable of propelling itself up the slopes at Husky Hall on wet grass, and it's possible to run through the garden in record time, rather than taking two hours with the Flymo. It mows and hoovers up long wet grass which would stall most other machines I've used without any sense that the engine is labouring and it's cute too.

New arrival

Thu, 28 Jan 2010 20:44:31 GMT

In August 2009 this handsome beast arrived. The battery was completely flat and a few other little jobs needed doing but it was basically sound.

For those interested, it's a 2003 model Land Rover TD5 (which means it has a weird 5 cylinder diesel engine) with a crew cab. There are all kinds of optional extras installed too such as air conditioning, which I would never have imagined you'd need in a Land Rover. There are heated seats as well. It's just a mass of wires and rubber tubes. They've changed a lot since my day.

Here it is again at the gate.

Despite these pretensions to luxury, like all Land Rovers since time immemorial, it leaks. It is virtually impossible to get the cab watertight. Rainwater gets in, apparently round the door seals. This is especially true of Husky Hall rain which is often horizontal and likely to be travelling faster than the spray from a pressure washer. 60-80mph winds are not unusual. Maybe new door seals would help a little, as they’re likely to be springier and fill the gaps more effectively. The existing ones have a permanent impression of the edge of the door in them, which rather casts aspersions on their fitness for purpose. As an interim measure I’ve taken the carpets out, dried them on the radiators and put them in the garage. Thus, the rainwater can drain out through the floor panels and not be retained in the carpet to rust everything and facilitate the growth of fungus. Seems a bit odd to have carpet in a Land Rover anyway.

Future developments might include a winch, and I rather fancy a suspension lift kit and hub spacers so as to widen the track. Bigger wheels and tyres would be nice too. There’s something seductive about those yellow springs and shock absorbers (or ‘shox’ as the idiom has it) you see offroaders using. But it looks like the main priority for the next few months is the house.

A path

Thu, 28 Jan 2010 20:20:09 GMT

In this post we'll have a quick look at some developments which took place at Easter 2009. There was a path of sorts down the garden, but with uneven stones and a great deal of grass growing between them. The border to one side of it sported a retaining wall, but in a curiously wavy design and it was falling down anyway. Therefore, a couple of days were spent re-paving the path and rebuilding the little wall.You might not imagine it from the brilliant sunshine depicted here, but the first day was so wet I couldn't build a wall more than two courses high because there was so much rainwater getting in the mortar. However, the weather was soon drier and we made some progress.

Once again, I forgot to take before picturers, but here's a little fellow who came to light when we dismantled the old wall.

The stone for the path was mainly quarried out from around the back of the house where we were digging away the ground to try to prevent damp getting in. You'll see more about this on a post further down.

Here it is from the other end. You may notice from a subsequent entry that this is also the line followed by the water pipe down to the garage.

Here's a bit which was added later in the year to enable the new lawnmower to go between the two parts of the garden. As it turned out, it was just the right width. Which was a good guess considering the lawnmower hadn't actuially arrived at that point.

Getting water down to the garage

Thu, 28 Jan 2010 17:25:17 GMT

Whilst we have electricity down at the garage, until March 2009 there wasn't a water supply down there. One of the jobs in March 2009 was installing a water pipe. Here's the nice new blue MDPE pipe snaking along the trench, looking towards the house. Yes, I know it's not quite deep enough for the current regulations, but that's bedrock it's resting on, and as it is an outside supply it wil be possible to turn it off in the house in cold weather. It doesn't merit the regulation 900mm deep trench, as that would require about a week's chiselling. Indeed, everyone else who has laid pipes or cables at Husky Hall has tended to lay them shallow. Very shallow. You can tread on the top surfaces of some of the drains.

Among the various archaeological discoveries was this earthenware drain. The pipes were badly broken so it wasn't doing much for us. They were factory moulded, so were probably 20th century in origin.

Here's the new supply pipe going under the garage floor, where it will emerge with a tap just inside.

And here's the pipe at the other end where it joins the house. Yes I know you're not supposed to put copper pipe in underground installations, but it's only a few centimetres and we're not on mains water so we can do pretty much whatever we like.

And here's the garden with turf relaid afterwards. The pipe goes under that clump of trees and bushes, under a wall and off to the garage which you can just see through the trees to the right of the picture

Making a retaining barrier

Thu, 28 Jan 2010 16:33:51 GMT

This is a project that started at the beginning of 2009 and occupied a good few weekends. The garage was in the process of sliding down the hillside. The earth had eroded from around the foundations and the concrete slab on which it was resting was cantilevered out over the slope. Consequently we needed to prop things up a bit. A previous effort to do so had failed, as daylight was clearly visible between the underpinning and the garage foundations.
A row of railway sleepers concreted into the ground seemed like a good idea.

The railway sleepers arrived from a local timber merchant at Easter 2009 and I set to work digging a trench for them. Here are the first few set in position. The ones furthest away from the viewer have some concrete around them already. They’re deliberately tilted into the angle of the slope so that gravity will help them keep the soil back.
I was hoping to concrete them into the bedrock The bedrock is seldom more than a short distance beneath the topsoil at Husky Hall, so I was expecting to have to chisel out a channel with the demolition hammer. But it’s all just clay. Very hard packed, fortunately, so it will offer some resistance to the force coming from uphill, but there wasn’t a trace of rock in situ throughout the length of the trench. As you can see by comparison with the pickaxe handle, they're about 1300mm into the ground at that point, and by the garage, where it really counts, they are around 1500-1700mm into the ground so they won't be shifting in a hurry.

Here's a view from the field.

No, the ones on the left aren’t shorter, they’re just tilted away from the viewer because we haven’t fixed them in position yet. The more I worked with them the more impressed I was. They’re a good 150mm thick, and seem to be made out of hardwood. Beech, at a guess, but it’s hard to tell because the preservative pressure treatment had penetrated right through them and obscured the usual medullary rays you get with beech. But it was tough stuff. Many of the old sleepers you see in the neighbourhood doing duty as fence posts are much thinner and made of softwood, so we’ve done well there.

Here they are a bit further along. Those planks along the top are not going to stay there, they’re merely in position to hold the row straight whilst we concrete them in. As you can see in the foreground, we’ve used this as an opportunity to dispose of a lot of the spare lumps of concrete and masonry which littered the property. Saves on sand and cement too. Obviously, not recommended practice for household foundations, but quite good enough for out here in the garden.

And here they are right along to the end, with the concrete brought up to ground level.

The top is level according to the spirit level. They appear to be disappearing into the ground as a result of the slope. These were quite elderly pieces of timber, which bore the marks of at least two sets of chairs on what had been their top surfaces. So they’d had a couple of jobs on the railway before coming here for their retirement. They’re all slightly curved, which is why they don’t but up neatly together. That’s an advantage in some ways, because it means that the soil behind will not become waterlogged.

Here's a view from the other end.

Just visible along the base of the garage wall is new concrete which we’ve inserted under the foundations to help hold up the foundation slab. Hopefully this won’t slip away, seeing as the soil will be retained by the barrier. We’ve managed to keep the bushes, because their roots help to bind everything together and they keep some of the weather off the garage itself. The more we can let the trees do the hard work the better.
As usual with Husky Hall projects, there are some archaeological artefacts to display. Here are a load of bottles.

Bottles looked like this when I was a child. I recognise whisky, cheap cider and long life milk. A heady mixture indeed.You can also just see one of those enamel things that old ladies used to keep their dishcloth and soap in when I was young.

From much deeper came this child’s boot. The underside was a solid mass of hobnails and the upturned toe is what used to be called a ‘shepherd’ style, allegedly to make it easier walking uphill through bracken and heather. There’s much evidence of repairs too, so it probably got passed down through a whole brood of children before being discarded.

Finally, this little fellow came to light in the rubble.

Note the pimply texture and smug, self satisfied expression.

Digging out the back of the house

Thu, 28 Jan 2010 14:49:06 GMT

The rear of the older part of the house suffered from damp. Well, it still does but it’s better than it was. The back of the house was embedded in the ground. The combination of mud and Ludlovian shale a metre or more up the wall helped to get the water into the house through the back wall. Consequently, the salt fused into one solid soggy mass if left in the kitchen for more than a few days, flour and cereals deteriorated rapidly and pots and pans rusted unless they were aluminium or stainless.

So in early 2009 I set to work. Digging through the earth and rock and various sedimented refuse would take me several weekends and would extend into the summer. But in February I made a start.

You can see the marks of the demolition hammer on the back face of the excavation. What a wonderful tool. This is a large Erbauer machine that was under £200 but has performed like a trooper throughout.

It was a dull and snowy weekend and the sheep took a keen interest as there was little else for them to do, and it's not as if they can read or surf the internet to pass the time.

Here's a photo taken after another session on the excavation project. This is at the side of the house, with the exterior wall of the kitchen to the left.

The water in the bottom of the hole gives some idea of just how wet all that shale is. To the left you can see a plastic gutter someone has thoughtfully cemented to the side of the house, at the original ground level. Not terribly effective, because it did nothing to address the fact that the water table in the ground was often higher than the floor level in the kitchen.

Here's a photo taken from the opposite direction to the one above, after more digging and with the kitchen wall to the left this time. On this particular occasion it was the middle of summer, but that shale was still soaking wet. The water seemed to have been held between the layers by means of capillary action. There’s even a little bit of the water table peeping through the loose material at the bottom of the excavation.

A good feature of this house is that the wall goes right down to the bottom of the building. Occasionally I’ve done this sort of job where there isn’t actually a back to the wall once you’ve dug the soil away and careful underpinning is needed. No problems like that here, fortunately.

Here’s the back of the house with the kitchen window just visible on the left. The rendering stops at the old ground level. In a previous attempt to deal with the damp someone had created a concrete channel along the wall, which once again wasn’t helping because it was about half a metre above floor level at this point and allowed water from the ground water table to creep straight into the wall. It's been chiselled off in this picture. It feels so good to let some air get to the masonry and watch it drying.

Here are a few of the things we dug out. The previous inhabitants must have thrown a lot of their rubbish straight out of the kitchen window. Lots of bottles, some of which were complete. Many were conveniently marked off with embossed table spoon measures.

There were also a great many pieces of blue and white pottery. The glaze was a mass of minute cracks, so a lot of dinners must have been kept warm in the oven before the plates finally disintegrated. It was probably sheep gristle and turnips mostly, so not the sort of meal you’d be keen to rush home to if you were a farmer.

Finally, it's time to get some rendering on. Here's a first coat - it won't have those trowel marks in when it's finished!

Now we're well into the winter, and as of the end of January 2010 the kitchen seems much drier. There are some rather lurid damp patches on the bedroom wall above, so all the condensation seems to have moved upstairs. But that's a job for another day.

Frost

Wed, 27 Jan 2010 11:04:12 GMT

I've just had a very busy weekend at Husky Hall. The cold spell in January had done a lot of damage. I arrived on the afternoon of Thursday the 14th having partly trudged up the hill through the snow and partly enjoyed a lift with a local farmer on his 4x4. It was a beautiful day with a hard frost and bright sunshine.

Unfortunately, pipes had split all over the house and the water was solid everywhere - in the toilets, in the pipes (and out of them) and, as far as I could tell, in the septic tank. The only thing still liquid was a half drunk bottle of gin left in the kitchen. Thus began a couple of days of repairs to the plumbing. It was a good job I caught it when I did because a thaw set in the following day. and the burst pipes, aided by the ever-obliging, pressure sensitive borehole pump in the well, would have made quite a spectacular mess.

It must have been very cold to do that much damage as there hadn't been any trouble like this in the cold spell at the start of 2009, nor at the start of 2006. A local weather station around 1,000ft below Husky Hall recorded a low of around -15 celsius. Now, allowing for the so called 'adiabatic lapse rate' (it gets colder the higher you go), Husky Hall might have experienced 17 or 18 degrees of frost. Our poor little pipes were split and their joints had been forced apart, even inside their insulation jackets.

Whilst there have been some depressing issues - I had to smash through my tiling in the bathroom to access a burst rising main and a broken domestic cold water pipe - fortunately a good many things were still working. The high cost items like the washing machine, the concealed-cistern toilet and the expensive, negative head shower pump seemed none the worse for their ordeal.

Let's hope some matching tiles turn up somewhere!

In the meantime, here are some pictures of the snow:

Sun setting through the trees

Looking southwards up the hill. There had been no traffic for several days and those drifts were deep.

Land Rover in the snow
Below is an example of what would have happened if I hadn't caught it in time. This is an empty house for sale further down the valley.

Bathroom

Mon, 14 Dec 2009 19:49:01 GMT

This post details some renovations to the bathroom that were undertaken over the weekends of August and September 2008.

Unfortunately, we don't have any before pictures, but this one will give you some idea as to what it was like. Hogan and Alex had started removing the tiles.

Those brown tiles were rather oddly positioned, so that the joints were all uneven. The roll edge bath might have looked quaint but it was discoloured and was a nuisance because it was impossible to have a shower or wash one's hair without making a mess on the floor.

Here it is with the plasterboard removed from the wall behind the washbasin.

The house is built out of local stone quarried out of the hillside. On a geological map this was described as Ludlovian shale. The original plaster has tufts of horsehair in it too, presumably as a means of binding it together. That dollop of pink plaster over the sink is in an alcove hollowed out of the wall to accommodate a bathroom cabinet.

This is where the toilet used to be:

Little did we realize at the time, but that soil pipe needed to be moved back to accommodate the new toilet. There are some nice new copper pipes coming through the wall on the right hand side of the picture, which will supply the shower.

Here are the pipes working their way around the room. One set for the shower and one set for the bath taps.

There are some holes in the floor too. The far one has been cut out to allow a waste trap to be fitted to the bath, which didn't have very much clearance under it. The near one seems to be some sort of attempt at ventilation. It only goes into the gap between the floorboards and the ceiling of the room below though, so probably wasn't very effective. These bright ideas were disclosed when the carpet was taken up.

Here go the pipes around the room.

You can also see that the walls have been clad in waterproof Aquapanel. We'll be doing some serious splashing in that shower.

Here are the old bathroom fittings outside where they belong.

The soil pipe needed to be moved in the wall so as to allow the new toilet to be taken back as far as possible into the corner of the room. Fortunately it was possible to chisel out the wall and gain a few vital inches.

The outlet pipe from the bathroom is being moved about 6 inches to the right of the picture.

Here's the new toilet in situ.

This is the most expensive toilet I have ever fitted. When the panelling and tiling is finished the cistern will be concealed and the toilet itself is entirely wall-hung and has no pedestal. All the flushing mechanism can be taken out and replaced through that chrome coloured panel above the lid.

Here's the bath in position, and the wall mounted taps fitted. The shower mechanism can be seen sticking through the wall. You can also see the peculiar shape of the room. The bath is tight into the corner, but on this side there's a gap of about 20mm or so between the end of the bath and the wall. It'll all sort itself out in the tiling . . .

Meanwhile, on the other side of the room at the tail end of the bath the frame for the washbasin can be mounted. When it's finished this will be concealed inside the partition.

Here's the washbasin fitted and the framing going in for the partition or false wall. In the top right you can see the ducting for the humidity sensitive fan that will be fitted. It goes out through the wall just under the eaves.

And here it is with the plasterboard on. No need for Aquapanel at this end as it won't be heavily soaked.

On go the tiles,. There was a lot of cutting out to be done around the taps and the shower fittings.

On goes the curved side panel for the shower.

That should keep the water inside where it belongs.

Now for some tiles for the outside wall. You can see we've patched the floor where the hole was. That ventilator couldn't have been working too well because the floorboards were rotten.

You can see the eerily suspended lavatory pan. It took us a while to build up enough courage to put our full weight on this, but it seems solid enough

Finally, here's a radiator.

After much deliberation and online searching for fancy and often very expensive things, this standard model was sourced from a local builder's merchant. It's done one and a half winters now and seems to create a lot of heat.

There are a few things still to do on the bathroom. A floor needs to be laid, the side panel needs to be fitted to the bath, a bathroom cabinet needs to be fitted and some woodwork needs to be done to finish off the top of the toilet and make a shelf. The wood has been purchased and we're awaiting the purchase of a mirror which will define the size of the cabinet. But it's all functional and much better than it was.

What Husky Hall looked like in the past

Sun, 13 Dec 2009 12:20:56 GMT

Here's a map from 1886. It looks a little blurry here but if you click on it you'll see a clearer version.

If you blow this up you'll see an L shaped structure, corresponding roughly to the footprint of the present house. However, there are also some outbuildings depicted as well as small enclosures. It is unclear whether these are merely farm sheds or whether they could be small cottages in which the many inhabitants listed in the various 19th century census returns might have lived. Of course, buildings could be used for both livestock and human habitation. Perhaps even at the same time in poor communities. A small group of fields to the south of the house seem to be under cultivation (nos 2032, 2033, 2034, 2035, 2037 and 2038) and much of the surrounding area is rough pasture and scrub. Also noteworthy is the boundary line that runs roughly east-west and transects the house. This corresponds to a ditch feature which is visible in the garden and which extends westwards in the present day in the remains of a hedge.

To see how the landscape changed over the next decade or so, have a look at the map from 1903. Once again, if it's blurry, click on it. All the detail is there, it's just that Live Journal is reluctant to show it.

The house is still there, as are the fields, but good deal of the surrounding area has been planted as woodland. No wonder Thomas Clayton in the previous entry became a gamekeeper around this time. There'd be a lot of woodland to look after, possibly on rather better wages than could be eked out of a diminishing farm. This woodland persists on the 1930 and 1947 Ordnance Survey series, so was present until the mid 20th century. Here's a 1930s Ordnance Survey map

And here's one from the 1940s

Here's an aerial photo from around 2007.

You can see the east-west line, corresponding to the driveway and the line of bushes heading westwards towards the little copse. Also of interest is the line that goes approximately from top to bottom. To the south there are a few hedge plants left, and to the north a line is visible which represents a bank feature on the ground. When the sun is low, one can see that it is in fact two banks about 2m apart, so it was once a trackway. In a sense then, Husky Hall is at a crossroads. That makes the position of the settlement a little more understandable. Why, otherwise, would on pick this particularly bleak place to set up home? The trackway to the north must have gone out of use some time ago, because it doesn't appear on the late 19th and early 20th century maps above. Most of the late 19th and early 20th century woodland is gone, but the southernmost two fields are now a pine plantation called Husky Wood.

Historical interlude: Husky Hall 1841-1901

Sat, 12 Dec 2009 12:36:14 GMT

For this entry, I thought we'd have a little historical tour through the census entries relating to Husky Hall from the 19th and early 20th centuries.
Here's the earliest one, from 1841.If the picture looks a little blurry, click on it and a clearer version will open in a new window.

There isn't an entry for Husky Hall as such. There is however one for Penybedren, which must be the same place. There are two families listed, the first comprising Edward Clayton (55), a mason, his wife Mary (40) and their children. The second family comprises the Joneses, plus another individual called George Humphrey (6). Although the note next to his name is crossed out he appears to be designated a 'mother's nursling'. At this stage in the 19th century wet nursing was still commonplace (though far less than at its peak in the 17th and 18th centuries) and it was not unusual for poorer families to take in very young children so as to earn wet nursing fees. Mind you, at 6 years, he'd be getting a bit old for that. The figure 6 may have indicated 6 months as these kinds of records do not always distinguish clearly between months and years. As you can see, they have a nursling, Hannah Higgs, at nearby Cwm Golog too.

Let's look ahead to 1851. Once again, if it has come out blurry, click on it and you'll see a clearer version:

The Claytons are still there. Edward, now 69, has been followed into the stonemason trade by his son William, now 18. Thomas, 13, is 'scholar'. However, the interesting point is that another family is listed as living there, the Davieses, John and Sarah, and their three children. If they were all in one house this would be a bit of a squash, even at the accommodation densities found among the 19th century labouring classes. It supports my suspicion that there were two dwellings on the site at this stage, especially as the census clerk has demarcated them with a horizontal line.

Let's see what's happening in 1861. Once again, if it's blurry, give it a click and a clearer version will appear.

There are only two people living there now. Mary Clayton is now a widow, Edward having presumably expired in the meantime since the last census. She's listed as a farmer of 18 acres and is accompanied by her son Thomas who is by now 24.

Let's move on to 1871. If it's blurry click for a better version.

Mary's still going strong as a farmer of 18 acres at te ripe old age of 73. As well as Thomas, a couple of other family members have returned to the nest. William, still a stone mason and now 38 is in residence, as is another William, 14 year old grandson of Mary and Edward.

Let's move on to 1881. Once again, click for a separate picture if it's blurred.

William and Thomas are still there. The farm is now only 8 acres and William is now a bricklayer rather than a stone mason, presumably with the advent of a brickworks in the local area at Goitre. Also living on the site were William Collins, a labourer, as well as Jane Morgan (50), Sarah Morgan (20) and another Jane (5). Quite a little community.

Let's move on as the Victorian era ripens into the 1890s. Click if its blurred.

Once again, there are quite a number of people living on the site, including Thomas Clayton now 50, his younger wife Elizabeth, Edith-Mary, an 8 year old boarder (who is also a 'scholar') as well as the new brood of Claytons, Ethel, Mary-Elizabeth and Leonard. Also listed is Thomas Stephens, brother in law who is an 'imbecile from birth'. The column on the form entitled 'Deaf and dumb, blind, lunatic, imbecile or idiot' reflects the changing role of the census, as intellectuals and policymakers became more preoccupied with issues of welfare and social hygiene. This was, after all, the era of Charles Booth, who pioneered the mapping of poverty in the metropolis, and the Rowntree work in York and elsewhere.

Let's move along to the 20th century. Click if it's blurred.

Thomas, now 60, an his 15 year younger wife Elizabeth now have four children. Thomas is a gamekeeper rather than a farmer, and their eldest daughter is now a dressmaker working on her own account. Thomas Stephens is still with them and he is still an imbecile. He is not the only one either. Elizabeth, wife of Richard Morgan at Drefor Cottage is an imbecile too.

Changing the gate. September 2007

Sat, 12 Dec 2009 11:49:07 GMT

This entry concerns some improvements which were made in September 2007 to the entrance to the property.
Here's the gate that was in place when we started. A tubular affair, sensibly galvanized against the elements. Note the green confection of mdf and hardboard serving as a letterbox. Despite the meticulous attention to detail it was rapidly deteriorating in the damp climate and the materials were softening and blooming.

Here are the new ones freshly delivered from Cannock Gates, complete with ironmongery and posts. They're laid out aproximately in position so as to determine the optimum locations to drill the holes for the bolts and the hinge pins. It's a lot easier to do these things when the timber is lying flat in my experience.

Here they are down at the end of the driveway, near to their final resting place.

Here I am with post in a post hole. When I put posts in like to plant them as deep as I can. The bottoms of the holes were chiseled into the bedrock with a Kango hammer Well actually, it was a Hitachi brand, but you know what I mean. With a bit of concrete and the lumps of masonry you can see in the picture around it, that's going to be solid. Just as well, because the longer of the two gates is heavy.

Here they are, finished off and painted with preservative. The Huky Hall sign has had to be moved so as to still be visible. As you can see the new gates are rather wider than the original one. Therefore, a little remodelling of the stone abutments was needed. This was carried out the following spring.

This is what happened in early 2008. The stonework was rebuilt and we put in a new mailbox. Despite being in the middle of large piece of masonry, the post still manages to get damp. The original Husky Hall sign was re-used. After a winter in the open air, the gates are starting to look green.

Here's a picture showing both sides, The left side wall has been extended to meet the perimeter fence so it looks a bit more substantial.

Here they are a little later in 2009 with some lights on top of them.

These were made by this man:
http://grumpyzeitgeist.co.uk/Pat_Robotham/A_Bit_of_scrap.html

A few items spotted in the local area June 2007

Sat, 12 Dec 2009 11:04:27 GMT

Here's a short break from DIY and home improvements as we wandered around looking at local features of interest.

Land Rover. Good runner. Some welding needed for MOT.

Just to give a sense of the sheer desolation of the area, here it is in context.

And there was a rather splendid circular saw just down the path.

Right, back to work now.

April 2007

Thu, 03 Dec 2009 23:36:14 GMT

Wales
Originally uploaded by bad bad magpie

The first of many loads of sand and cement has arrived.

The slabs around the pond were uneven with tufts of grass between them. We dug them up and re-laid them on a cement bed.

Here's what it looks like with the old ones gone. Note the various misshapen lumps of masonry in the background.

And here's a barrowful of cement being mixed up. The barrow looks really new in these shots. That didn't last long.

And here's the result, once the slabs had been reset. Tapping them into place with a hammer and that length of wood in the picture managed to achieve a fairly flat surface, inclined towards the pond to help rainwater run off. There's a lot of rainwater in this part of the world.

Here's what it looked like with the pointing done.

It's only a few concrete slabs round the pond, but it's a start.

Detail of Husky Hall's garden

Thu, 03 Dec 2009 23:20:57 GMT

Wales
Originally uploaded by bad bad magpie

Apples ripening. They don't do too badly considering the altitude and the severity of the weather. Last winter (2009) the bark was eaten off the trees by rabbits, so we were surprised when they came into leaf and set fruit. There must have been a thin film of cambium, just a few cells thick, joining the upper and lower parts of the trees.

Detail of Husky Hall's garden

Thu, 03 Dec 2009 23:15:30 GMT

Wales
Originally uploaded by bad bad magpie

Lichen, decomposing timber. July 2006. This structure blew down the following winter and was consigned to the bonfire in the spring of 2007.

Sticks and string

Thu, 03 Dec 2009 12:44:18 GMT

The Blair Witch aesthetic can be clearly seen in this tasteful arrangement of sticks and string around a rose bush to the right of the picture. To the left can be seen the visually intrusive yet ineffectual bits of wire mesh and sticks which were also a prominent feature of the horticultural decor. All gone now, thank goodness.

For those of you who value a serious horticultural challenge, you might try adopting the principles of lowland suburban gardening at 400 metres above sea level. See what the climate does to ornamental tubs and pots. More crap in the background.

The first entry

Thu, 03 Dec 2009 09:54:10 GMT

This Livejournal account has been set up to catalogue a series of home improvements that are taking place at Husky Hall in the Welsh Marches. Huky Hall is situated near Newtown in mid Wales. Newtown is not necessarily that new, as it can trace it origins back to Edward I and Roger de Montgomerie who turned the original hamlet into a substantial settlement. The hills around Husky Hall are also rich with history, as the work of previous generations can be seen in fortifications, ditches, field boundaries and trackways that often bear little resemblance to the current arrangement of roads and fences. The house itself is transected by a much older boundary ditch, that has been excavated into the bedrock in places . This disappears under the front door and comes out at the rear of the kitchen. The core of the present house appears to date from the turn of the 18th and 19th centuries, but incorporates pieces of timber from a much earlier structure. Beams over windows and doorways have long-redundant mortices, peg holes and slots for wattle and daub framing.

Here's a picture of the house through the trees in the front garden. This was taken in April 2006. Despite the bleak conditions, the trees have managed to grow a bit since then.

Here's a view down the drive, taken from the roof of the house. Once again it's April 2006 and the trees have grown a good deal since.

Here's the side of the house. Note the pipes, wires and ill-matched, disintegrating bits of trellis. The previous owner had clearly adopted his aesthetic from the film Blair Witch Project as the whole place was decorated with bits of wood tied up with string. This was back in 2006. We've got rid of most of it now, but we still keep finding things in the bushes and under hedges.

And here's one of the neighbours