Sunday was the gathering at Woodchester Mansion. I popped in to Oxford on the way, where I caught up with Grandi, redkitty23 and purple_pen – there was much excitement including, among other things, ladders and airpumps, but it was all OK in the end.
Of course I was late leaving, so arrived at the mansion, somewhat after the arranged meeting time. Still, evilmattikinz was waiting on the bus from the car park to the mansion itself, so I was only just the last there…by the time we’d arrived at the tearoom hirez, girfan, cally_tmk and cabbage had all gotten to know each other. We spent some time plotting What The Hack, UK, and generally geeking at each other. Once we’d emptied the tearoom hirez and girfan disappeared into the fog too, as they’d arrived on time and had already done the tour without us, and without knowing how useless the rest of us can be.
The mansion is still in middle of being built – it was abandoned in a partially built state sometime in the middle of 1800s. There were clearly grand plans for it, all of the structure is in place but it has no finishing. The tour starts outside with an explanation of the context and recent history of the building – howcome it came to be preserved and open to the public in the way it is.
Then we were taken inside, through what would have been the main entrance, which now looks a little sad – after the donation of the porch to a local church. The first thing I noticed on entering the billiard room was that there was a fireplace halfway up the wall. Odd. Oh, thats the level a floor should be – theres a door next to it, and some springers for a vaulted ceiling below. The walls are unfinished, exposing the weightbearing arches behind the mantlepieces and over the doors.
We wound our way through the works, with explanations of some of the building techniques we can see en route, there was a room in the corner of building which had been hastily (and cheaply) finished for the visit of a dignitary of some kind, the only truly finished room in the house. Beyond was the chapel, filled with structural scaffolding – the stone has crumbled such that it can no longer be relied upon to hold its own weight.
Further, we see the laundry room and the kitchen, fitted with a range suitable for a modern two bedroom cottage, not the extensive mansion this should be – it was, apparently, inhabited by one of the owners for a while, but he couldn’t afford to do more than make a small section livable.
Upstairs we find a bat expert who explained in disturbing detail the reproductive cycle of horseshoe bats, complete with video accompaniment, thankfully just a live feed of the bat colony living in the building.
Onward and upward – we reach the top of the building where we are walking on the vaulted ceiling of the floor below – there is no floor here – from here we can look down into the rooms we were in at the begining of the tour – we are at the level of one of the sets of fire-place-in-the-wall. From here we can see some of the tricks they use in constructing these big old piles – handling the keystone/rose of the vaulted ceiling, formers for creating arches, etc.
We descend the main staircase, and down into the cellar, where there are some great acoustics and out of place smoke alarms – why do you need an alarm in a stone building which has nothing in it to burn?
The building as a whole is an unusual restoration project – they are attempting to maintain the half-finished quality to the building, so restoration cannot be completed, but has to be good enough to be long lasting. Worth visiting, I can’t do it justice in words. More interesting than your average stately home.
And, to finish off, a lesson in customer service (I don’t remember the exact words, and I was probably angry by this time having decided that all service stations had some reason why their toilets were off limits to customers):
Me (after wandering around a deserted petrol station building): “Excuse me, do you work here?”
Him (having a cigarette out the back door): “Yes”
Me: “Do you have a toilet I could use?”
Him: “I can’t let you in because I’m on my own and if you mug me its my fault”
Me: “Oh, the last service station had its toilet broken, too, what am I supposed to do?”
Him: “Drive to the next one, thats only six miles”
Me: “And that’ll be closed too, won’t it?”
Him: “I don’t know its not one of ours”
Me: “Maybe I could go round here somewhere?”
Him: “If you did I could have you arrested for indecent exposure”
Me: “Well what am I supposed to do?”
Him: “Drive to the next services”
Me: “Thats not good enough, I’d like to submit a complaint, do you have an address I could write to?”
Him: “Its not my fault, I told you, its health and safety”
Me: “Well, that doesn’t help me, does it, I’m bursting here, what can you do?”
Him: “Sir, I’m going to go and push the panic button, you are getting abusive”
Me: *leaves*
A rather fabulous collection of three accusations of criminal behaviour and obstruction of my attempt to complain through the proper channels. Sadly I can’t remember whether this was a Shell or a BP station, the closed one I visited before was the other. If I can figure it out I shall be submitting a written complaint. You’ll notice, also, that he volunteered the information that he was on his own with the back door open and with him some distance away from it, which, if I was the kind of mug him, would have been a very good time to try.
6 comments