A house built in 1780 is a bit of a challenge to inspect and to try to fathom out how it was put together.
In some cases it is a miraculous thing that it still stands to this day.
I hesitate to use the phrase "stand up straight" because in the matter of the late 18th Century cottage that I looked at just yesterday there was not one entirely perpendicular or aligned wall in the whole place and yet, that is the exact characteristic that people go for when buying anything old.
At one time the cottage and its 4 matching neighbours belonged to the same owner. He made that known to me when he accosted me on the pavement within seconds of my taking up a vantage point. The one I was looking at he had sold off some years ago.
The new and former owners had apparently fallen out big style during the cut and thrust of the purchase procedure and the two, in spite of living in close proximity either side of a single brick thick party wall had only exchanged hard stares since. This was the exact same situation that faced me this day as the owner, now seller, had heard a conversation on the street.
Standing resolutely cross armed at the threshold the hard staring commenced.
I felt a bit awkward.
On the one hand I had to get on well with the seller for the next few hours if I was to be granted access to all parts of the cottage.
On the other, the cantankerous former owner had confided in me gleefully that his roof leaked like a sieve and it would certainly be the same next door. I made a mental note to verify this for myself later on.
The front elevation had been painted a bright lemon colour but in a thin enough coat to make out the bonding pattern of the bricks underneath. The paint served a number of purposes from prettifying a rather plain facing brick to disguising cracks, pitted and eroded facings and where alterations, their reason and purpose lost in the mists of time, had been carried out by one or more persons unknown.
The lowest two courses of brick had been blathered in bitumastic in a traditional measure to combat rising dampness. It may have been effective for a century or so but had certainly failed now. Corresponding internal surfaces were saturated, stained, a bit fusty and anything organic attached, such as skirting boards and door frames were also creased and soft from ongoing rot.
Authentic sash cord hung windows were just about holding on to the masonry surround with difficulty and I dare not attempt a test opening in case everything fell out onto the pavement.
A few rough hewn timber lintels could be seen above the frames but these were pockmarked with worm and fissured with weathering.
As for the roof, well, the pantiles were obviously the original but a good few were missing and the furtive tip off from the old man was certainly looking to be a good one.
I counted, as usual, the number of chimney pots in order to tally these up with the fireplaces and flues on a room to room basis. I was often missing one or two chimney breasts which had fallen to the seductive persuasions of the Readers Digest Book of Home Improvements (1974) which encouraged ripping out the mass of brickwork in the living room but leaving a good tonnage unsupported in the room or rooms above.
The tall and soot blackened pots themselves were at crazy angles and if used for removal of smoke would certainly send a plume horizontally rather than wicking it away into the atmosphere.
I stood back and admired the window box floral displays until realising that the vegetation was in fact hanging in the gutters.
The owner patrolling the footpath for any return by the vindictive neighbour asked the usual question of "is everything looking alright so far?".
I have mastered a neutral facial expression in response after more than a quarter of a decade in the job when in my early years I may have shouted "just run away as fast as you can and do not look back!".
And then with a mixture of fear and anticipation I made my way to the inside...........(to be continued)
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