Anniversary

Today marks a significant moment in time. 10 years in fact. A decade of a life, a quarter of my own.

It was 10 years ago this very day that we walked into Clayhill House as its new owners, collecting the keys that had been left in the door and started to take it all in.

I took many photographs that day, feeling both overwhelmed and excited. It would be some months later that I would start to upload all of these on to a blog that documented our journey of renovating the place.

We unpacked ourselves into a bedroom, airbeds and sleeping bags set up by what now is the location of a bath.

I think of the many layers of people and moments in this place, the custodians of before and our responsibilities of it all now.

As today itself stands, the air is calm and the sky hangs grey. We have had a week of intense rain and wind, two storms, news of flooding and damage across the county but we have been safe here.

The buildings and the land is safe and still.

Many things have happened here over the last 10 years. Much of it a reconstruction, a bringing back to life of the tumbling structures of stone, brick and tile. A reimaging of the spaces that have existed for a new ‘contemporary way’ of living on a farm.

The cattle have gone, the milking equipment too but we have sat with their histories.