Chapter 11: From 1992 to the Present Day

December 1994 proved to be another turning point because of a purchase that I made at one of a series of auctions that took place at that time in the warehouses backing onto George Street, presided over by Ian Porter as auctioneer. At the auction on 3 December that year I bought (for £40) a lovely set of two pairs of small glazed doors that had evidently been removed from a Georgian bookcase, and I realised that these would be ideal to be made into a set of kitchen units. I thereupon commissioned Simon Bartlett to design this, and his quotation for this and the other components of the revamped kitchen which now took shape is dated 15 January 1995.

Kitchen including aga

Basically, we built a structure under the window of the Aga section of the kitchen which comprised a set of cabinets fronted by the two pairs of glazed doors, with, at the lefthand end, a small butler sink bought from Potter Perrin in February that year, under which was a wooden cupboard constructed by Woodbase, fronted by a varnished door. Beside the sink was a working surface which mainly comprised a board covered with glazed tiles that had formed part of the kitchen at Ashburnham Cottage (it was not used at Oakley Square but had been in storage), extended by an extra six tiles to fill the requisite space. Elsewhere in the kitchen, a cupboard was built around the hot water cylinder; a hardwood board with a removable draining board was installed over the fridge by the sink; and a set of shelves was constructed to hold crockery on the opposite wall. View image. All this was done in the spring of 1995, and this probably seemed enough to keep me going for a while, the only minor task that followed later that year being the replacement of the iron grille in the cellar at the side of the house (the bill is dated 31 December): this had decayed so that the struts had become pointed like a portcullis, and it was replaced by a new solid frame made by Simes on the Ridge.