Chapter 11: From 1992 to the Present Day

2004 is primarily memorable as the year of the well. As noted in chapter 10, the existence of a well straddling the kitchen wall had become apparent during the initial work on the house, but it did not seem a high priority to do anything about it, so it was just left under a concrete slab. Now, however, I resolved to take it in hand. In my file I have a page of notes on a conversation on 19 March with John Fairhall at which various works were discussed, all which were implemented later that year. One was of replacing the lintel above the garage door: this was of iron which had perished and needed to be replaced with a concrete one. In addition, John did some work on the front terrace, replacing a number of York stone slabs.

The well

The most important task, however, was the well, and we carefully planned the construction of a retaining wall around it, to be topped by a hinged iron grille, which had to be commissioned from Ironworks, a company which shared the same premises as Woodbase at Westfield. In addition, since (as noted in chapter 3) the well straddles the side wall of the house, which has a gauged brick arch over it, it was necessary to excavate the part of the kitchen floor that surrounded it and for a glazed panel to be installed to cover the internal part of the well, which was specially made by Woodbase. View image. The next task involved John and his colleague, also John, descending the well and clearing out the debris that had accumulated at the bottom - mostly paint tins, cans, bottles and similar debris chucked down there by previous owners. For this, we constructed a scaffolding from which a man could be lowered down the well to fill successive bucket-loads of debris. This was a laborious and time-consuming procedure, which we undertook only as long as there was loose debris at the bottom: when we got to a more compact, harder, layer, we stopped. How much deeper the well might have been we therefore never discovered, but, at 40 foot (12 metres), it is pretty impressive as it is. Down the sides of the well are a series of recesses, like holes to support scaffolding, thus evidently illustrating how it was dug -- as if there were beams across, linked by a series of ladders.

Over the summer, I accumulated a lot of low denomination 2004 coins, which I chucked down the well to provide a date of when the work was executed. Then, we had spot-lights fitted to the sides of the new brick structure that had been constructed at the top, and the grille fitted; later in the year I also ordered a wooden cover, since otherwise leaves and other debris would have blown down the well and messed it up. Just one other point about the well: it has a crack in the sandstone through which it is cut, going down as far as you can see from below the brick steining (which evidently served its purpose at that point, simply shifting slightly, whereas if mortar had been used the brickwork would have collapsed). This was evidently due to an earth tremor at some time in the history of the house, and traces of this also came to light in the form of cracks to the brickwork of the chimney in the sitting room and the bedroom above: the shock evidently found the weakest point in the wall, since at the chimney breast the brickwork is halved in thickness compared with the massive walls on either side. When this took place is unclear: it might have been over a century ago. However, this crack is a possible explanation of the drying up of the well, though an alternative explanation is either (1) that we didn’t dig deep enough to get down to the water level or (2) that the water table for the Old Town has sunk since the well was used.

The autumn of 2004 saw the threat to build a new house where the garage currently stands across the footpath in the curtilage of West Hill Villa. Mercifully this was averted, but one side effect of the threat of a putative house was that it made it essential for the music room to look as if it was in regular use, rather than just being a junk room, as had been the case hitherto. It was therefore now neatly decorated, with some haste. Looking back on it, this had two corollaries. One was that, of all the upstairs rooms, this is the only one that retains the cornice that the Willetts had had in all of them, which in a way is rather nice. The other was that, slightly to my regret, the chimney breast was just plastered over rather than having any kind of fireplace installed: I suppose that this is one outstanding task in the house that could still be undertaken. In the following year extensive shelving was erected in that room, which was further extended in 2011.

Front of house

2008 saw the house repainted by Chris Whiteman, including the replacement of the wooden board commemorating Matthew Fagg by the current blue plaque. At the same time the cupboards were built in the laundry room, and the surround provided for the fireplace there (all by Woodbase), and the French windows in the rear study were undercoated and painted (by Chris Whiteman as usual). 2008 also saw the installation of a new combination boiler, which meant that the water tanks could be removed from the roof - quite a relief, as flooding due to a leak in the cold water tank up there had long been one of the chief threats to the house. In conjunction with the new boiler, a new water supply to the house was installed, involving the digging of a trench in the street to reach the new metre: that was paid for by Southern Water, but Derek Holt was responsible for the pipework into the house. Then, in 2010 the roof was filled with thick insulation at no cost to me, since I was over 60 years of age and therefore eligible for this: this seems to have led to a rationalisation of the stuff stored in the attic, which had previously been scattered throughout the roof space but now had to be concentrated near the hatch, making particular use of the large wooden frame that had supported the cold water tank removed in 2008.