Having discovered a possibly valuable antique Sheraton washstand and seeing it disintegrate before my eyes, I got back to the serious job of hacking a path through the undergrowth surrounding the abandoned Cottage. There seemed once to have been a path leading round to the long back wall, so I followed that.
I passed two windows both too cobwebbed and filthy to show anything of the interior. Then, at what I judged to be halfway along the rear wall, I came to a door. The frame was made of three lengths of oak post about 6 inches square, the jambs roughly morticed and tenoned into the lintel. The door, hung on plain gate hinges of the sturdy strap type and was half open. I pushed it a bit further and was able to step over the stone threshold into a lobby about 4 feet square.
In front of me a greying lime-washed wall rose vertically for about five feet, then stepped back six inches and continued upwards at a raking angle. It was obviously the side of a large inglenook fireplace topped with the usual inverted funnel of a chimney. To my right was a simple ledge and brace door, typical of many cottage interiors. It too was half open and gave access to a room about twelve feet square. The rambling rose that had entered through the broken panes of the window in the back wall had attempted to root in the cracks of the pamment floor, then exited through the window in the front wall.
Once inside the room I could see that the original large open fireplace had been walled across to accommodate a small kitchen range and separate built-in bread-oven, both were ruinously rusty. So far, if I'd been looking for antiques of any value, I was obviously twenty years too late.
In the alcove at the far side of the chimney breast were the remains of a cupboard staircase. Having recently experienced the disintegration of the wash-stand, I made no attempt to investigate this as it displayed a woody complexion of that same ghostly white. In any case there were sufficient gaps in the beamed ceiling and roof above to warn me how dangerous exploring the upper floor would be. I returned to the lobby and closed the outer door. This allowed me to open the other door of the lobby and enter the room beyond This appeared to have originally been about twelve feet by twenty, but had been subdivided by a now collapsed studwork partition. The nearest half of the room was much the same as the kitchen but with a 1930s beige tile fireplace instead of the range and oven. This was one of the plain and ugly square ones with a mean little grate and the heating capability of a dozen candles. I know, I had one in my bedroom as a child.
In the alcove, another cupboard staircase gave access to the upper floor. This one was still usable with care and I climbed just far enough to see that judging by the remains of an iron bed frame, the steep triangular loft space had been used as bedroom. It was lit by a small window in the gable and a minute dormer at floor level, which I had failed to notice from the outside.
The partitioned off section of the room below was empty, but did lead to what I supposed I'd better call the front door. It was heavily built and impossible to open, so I returned to the kitchen where I found the back-up team glaring at the range and muttering to the offspring about Aga cookers and scrubbed pine tables. The planning process had begun.
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