My name is robgil , me and my GF are in the process of buying an old cottage restoration project whilst living in it and found this site whilst looking for info on our roses. The garden was a complete jungle after having been neglected for many years when the cottage was unnoccupied , we now want to take on the garden challenge and hopefully creat a veg garden , herb garden and a lawned area with flower patches here and there whilst keeping it in a semi wild 'cottagy garden' kind of state if that makes sense? twee is not what we do as i find more beauty in wild'ish kind of gardens than i do in pretty flower beds (not knocking any body with pretty flower beds ). So , with the help of a neighbour we cut back all the over grown jungle , small ash and oak trees , lots of elder , the hedge was a good 6 feet deep andnow we are starting to see where the garden actually is. this is how it looked before we cut it back, as you can see its still over grown but most of this is piles of cut down foliege that will be cleared and burnt. the floor bricks and bins will be put away. these are the rose bushes, we know we have our work cut out for us but hopefully we can make it into a nice , working garden that we can enjoy and hopefully eat!
Hi robgil & ...! :thumb: You are in a lovely part of the country up there, I know, I have friends in Suffolk.. I think you have made brilliant in roads on your garden so far.. I have a small Cotswold cottage & garden & like you I do not like a very formal layout.. I have been here 40 odd yrs now.. I just love the mix of flowers & fruit & veg that you get from it & it was how cottagers of many years ago cultivated their gardens.. So looking forward to following your progress & never be afraid to ask those awkward questions, we all started out somewhere & are still asking questions..!! :lollol: See you around the forums.. :thumb:
hi robgil, welcome to gardeners corner. i'd love to see updates on your retoration project when they happen, it looks like great space you have there
thanks for the welcome , i will most certainly keep you guys informed as i progress , its been slow though and it wont get any quicker. i am hoping to be ready to plant some stuff next spring though , i have also got an old cottage to restore so the work will be spread out between the two , as well as my daily job. still , it will all be worth it in the end.
Hi there and Welcome, I agree, i would LOVE to see updates on your cottage, i love the roof, we dont have anything like that over here in Canada.
Hi Penny, it an old timber framed hall house built in the early 1500's. it later had a first floor put in and a couple of inglenook fireplaces , one of which collapsed a couple of hundred years or more ago and was replaced with a Georgian one although i have yet to date it properly , the inglenooks were Tudor. sometime in the 1800's it had a clay lump lean-to extension put on the back of it which could have been used to house animals but we are uncertain of this , the clay lump had deteriorated badly due to water ingress and frost and i have just finished repairing this it has a straw roof. it has remained pretty much untouched apart from some repair work to some of the daub infill panels and the addition of windows here and there. luckily it escaped the modernisation techniques normally used on old houses like this and most of the modernisation took place in the 50's , 60's and 70's which was more to do with covering the ld house up rather than taking it away , the downside is they used cement which accelerated any rot in the timbers and has left some sole plates and brick plinths needing repair. all this is easy stuff though and as i plan to do it all my self it should be relativly cheap as well , just very time consuming. still , there is something very satisfying and rewarding about working with materials like daub etc etc. I dont think i could ever live in a modern house again. Its going to be a long term project and we are living on the first floor whilst we do the work on the ground floor and we have been able to get away with this set up so far , cabin fever hasnt set in just yet.
Hi Rob, THANK YOU, for telling me about the house:thumb:, i think the age and the history of it is just amazing, i had to Google inglenook:hehe:(had no idea what it was):wink:, i would love to have a huge fireplace like that. As i've said before, we dont have anything like that over here in Canada, and if we do, its at the Museum, and you have to pay to go and see it:thumb:. Please keep the pics coming with your progress, i for one, find it fascinating:gnthb::gnthb::gnthb:
i will do Penny. An inglenook roughly translates to fire in the corner , Nook in middle english translates to corner , alcove or recess so a recess or alcove (chimney) in the corner and ingle could be derived from Scottish gealic meaning fire place. the photo i showed you was of the georgian fire place , the tudor inglenook is much much bigger and sits in the corner of the room , its built from tudor bricks and has a huge oak lintel with another huge bressumer beam over the top of that stretching across the entire gable end of the house. unfortunately some of the tudor brick has been rebuilt with engineering bricks so we have to have some new bricks specially made to repair this , i will upload some pics of it as its quite something to see , its full of building materials at the moment though.
