Chapter 11: From 1992 to the Present Day

The completion of the initial ‘Woodbase’ phase took place the following summer, 1996, in the form of the decoration of the north-easterly front bedroom, which had all the hallmarks of the combined operations over the previous couple of years. Thus there was a lot of joinery executed by Simon Bartlett, in the form of a large wardrobe with full-length doors and a half-height cupboard with bookshelves above, flanking a surround to the fireplace done in varnished wood with a marble inlay. The grate (I forget its source) was actually flued in, so it could work, though it has hardly, if ever, been used. Chris hung the wallpaper (by G.P. and J. Baker: see above), and I also went to great trouble over the lighting, arranging various wall-lights so as to avoid having a ceiling fitting. Since it was at that point my bedroom, it seemed worth all the effort, and the finishing touch was added by a counterpane for the bed made for me by my neighbour, Jo Cheevers: these were her speciality.

Front bedroom on North East side of house

Matters were now interrupted by a natural disaster. On Monday, 28 October 1996, a gale-force wind lifted a huge bush of ivy off the perimeter wall separating the garden of Exmouth House from the footpath to the West Hill, pulling down part of the brick wall with it and damaging the remainder. It should perhaps be explained that there had long been a profuse growth of ivy on the wall in question: in fact, I note that I was requested by the Council to trim it in the summer of 1993. Now, I resolved to have the wall rebuilt (largely at the expense of the insurers of the house, the Abbey National), and I actually had it rebuilt significantly more regularly and higher than it had previously been, when the top had been masked by the great ivy bush. Instead, it was now built up to a height which more or less matched the wall that faces it across the path, and it was neatly topped off with a set of triangular-headed bricks, inspired by the similar bricks that topped the churchyard wall behind All Saints Church on the East Hill. The idea was to keep the newly-rebuilt wall free from ivy up to approximately the point by the lamp-post where the path turns to go up the hill behind the greenhouse to West Hill Villa. The work was executed by Tommy Lyons, a bricklayer who lived at 6 Hill Street: I remember he spent a lot of time in the pub and died not long afterwards, so I like to think of the wall as the Tommy Lyons Memorial (I was almost tempted to put up a plaque to that effect). While he was at it, Tommy also did some minor repairs to the top of the wall supporting the cliff behind the house.

Side view of house and West Hill House

A succession of tasks followed over the next few years (this is now turning into a kind of journal!) One was repainting the exterior of the house, including the stuccoed chimney (which required scaffolding), which was executed by Chris Whiteman in 1998. I seem to have gone to great trouble to ask advice from the Georgian Group about the colour scheme, though we just ended up with an ochre colour for the stucco, with white for the joinery and black for the balcony and railings. One embellishment that was added at this point was the plaque by the front door commemorating Mathew Fagg’s construction of the house: this was originally painted on a board. It sometimes confuses people who presume that it is a kind of blue plaque (as it later became), commemorating someone famous. In fact, however, the idea was simply to have a notice informing you who built the house, to which I was inspired by my visit to Salem, Massachusetts, in May 1993, where I noticed that many houses had such plaques.

Front door and plaque