A trip to a Sussex Museum

Houses often have faces. Sometimes they look happy, sometimes sad, occasionally grumpy or even scary. They sometimes also have a feel to them. A good warm feeling or a cold hard one. Maybe the feelings are the echoes and memories of those who have lived in them. All those moments of energy in one place. So many layers of laughter, tears, birth and death. This house doesn't look happy or sad to me, maybe a little unsure or slightly worried? I like this house, the inside had a good warm feeling. It reminds me of the simple houses that children draw. It reminds me also of a children's TV series that I can remember from childhood. I must have been very young as I remember that it scared me a little and it has stayed with me for years. All I could remember of it (until recently) was that it was about a house with someone trapped upstairs. They were trapped upstairs because there was no staircase. It's only recently that I found out what the TV series was, by searching on youtube. 

I came across this house at the Weald and Downland open air museum a couple of weeks ago.  

The Museum is just outside of Chichester in West Sussex. It's home to a number of old buildings that were rescued instead of being demolished from various places in Sussex and the Eastern surrounding counties. I love old buildings so this has been on my list of places to visit for a while now.

“The old house had a thousand doors in it.

All old houses do. You can see them if you know how to look: the noontime shadow of a windowpane crawling with intent across a floor; unmeasured angles of wall meeting wall; fireplaces grown chill with unused years. Archways with unseen contours you can trace with a finger in the cracks as brick grinds against brick in settling walls. Some nights, and some houses are doorways entire, silhouettes against the evening's last light black on black like an opening into a darker sky. You just have to look. An eye-corner glance will do, if you don't turn and stare and explain it away.”
~ Michael Montoure

 

“It was a mistake to think of houses, old houses, as being empty. They were filled with memories, with the faded echoes of voices. Drops of tears, drops of blood, the ring of laughter, the edge of tempers that had ebbed and flowed between the walls, into the walls, over the years.
Wasn't it, after all, a kind of life?

And there were houses, he knew it, that breathed. They carried in their wood and stone, their brick and mortar a kind of ego that was nearly, very nearly, human.” 

~Nora Roberts  Key of Knowledge

This one below is an old market hall.

Just as beautiful on the inside, as the outside.

As well as houses I also spied a beautiful gaggle of geese. 

And this handsome fella and his friends...

It was a bitterly cold day and the fires lit inside some of the cottages were very appreciated. 

There are many other buildings and things to see, but the tudor style is where my heart lies hence the pictures. It's a lovely place to visit, I would like to return when it is a little warmer though and next time I will hopefully get to look in the little gift shop which sadly had already closed by the time we had finished looking around.  

Back at home amid our local beautiful timber framed buildings, the time had been turned back and a whole street transformed for Shakespeare and his friends. A new tv series about 'Will' the young William Shakespeare. I felt very much at home amid all these props. It was a visual delight.

Wouldn't it be fabulous if it was a permanent fixture, so much better than parked cars don't you think? ;) 

The talisman that I showed in progress in my last post are now finished and in the shop here.  Over half of them have sold already, so make haste my dear friends, if you were hoping to snaffle one up. 

Have a magical week. 

X

A Trip to the North

'And so the time came for the white hare to journey north. Far away, high up above the arctic circle, to where the sun does not rise in winter time. To the land of the Lapland woman, the Finland woman and the Snow Queen. To where the wardrobe's door opens to an icy sparkling world. He had heard the song of the North call to him for so long and now the time was right'
                                                                      ~*~
Finnish Lapland. Two hundred and fifty kilometres above the Arctic circle, this is where I was lucky and grateful to begin the first week of the brand new year. An adventure in a magical snowy land. The land of my dreams. A place where after only a few minutes outside, my hair and eyelashes had turned white with ice. A cosy log cabin, our home for seven days. A cabin that I wanted to continue living in and take home with me by the end of the week.

Inside the cabin was warm and cosy with a log burner and a weeks worth of wood outside on the porch.

The white hare stood out in the cold snow beneath the starlight and whispered to the sky. His words were carried up into the polar night. He told of a robin that knew the secrets of old and silently the lady Aurora answered with the most beautiful reply' 

Our first night we were blessed and saw the Aurora borealis right above our cabin. A milky green rose up and arched across the sky. I hadn't realised that she moved so quickly. A shape almost creature like, tip toed sideways above us. Walking diagonally she swished her tail as if to say 'here I am'
The Finnish term for the Northern Lights is 'Revontulet' meaning fox fire, which comes from an old tale where the fox was believed to swish its bushy tail on the snowy fell landscapes, throwing sparks into the air. (would love to incorporate that into a painting at some time. :))
That first night I was unable to capture any pictures. Results on my camera were totally black blanks of night sky and so was my iPad. Only my daughter seemed able to catch them on her phone.
So, the next night, after a day of cross country skiing I set my camera up on a different setting and crossed my fingers that she would return again...
She did, out of the seven days we were so so lucky to get glimpses four days out of the seven.  Pictures are blurry as I literally just held my camera to the sky and tried to hold it still. I had no tripod or any fancy gear.

'And she danced, swirling her green gown across a sparkling sky. The white hare watched in wonder and all that he had imagined became reality'

Aurora over the cabin...

In the morning at about 8.30am-9am with a beautiful crescent moon.

The morning walk to ski.

Father Christmas was no where to be seen. Taking a much needed break I'm sure! 

A week filled with hot chocolate, hot berry juice, elves, reindeer, twinkling lights, crackling of log fire, crunch of snow and the clear cold air of the north, in my lungs. 

One afternoon, out in the forest, when already darkness was approaching. We met some reindeer.

In a wooden sleigh lined with a reindeer skin and a thick blanket to cover, we were transported through the forest pulled by a white reindeer that looked as if he had stepped straight out of the pages of a fairytale. The heavenly arctic twilight cast a spell on me as the sleigh pulled and creaked like frosted branches on a windy night. It was at this moment that I knew that the Snow queen would have me in her grasp forever. The magic had entered my eyes and the North would always be pulling me back.
The temperature on our journey was -33, so it was quite difficult to uncover my fingers to take photographs and hold the camera still.

In the forest the white hare met a reindeer, who told him how the Snow Queen had tricked him. How a spell had been cast and how now she would own part of his heart forever.

When the journey was finished, darkness was almost upon us. We went into a cabin for hot berry juice and cake.

Inside I learned a little about reindeer and Sami people. How they freely roam the forest, how the deer that pull the sleighs are only male. The amazing fact that reindeer can see the white moss and lichen that they dig up and eat beneath the snow, using ultra violet light and how each single strand of their hair/fur is filled with air, which is why it keeps them so warm in the cold. I got to feel the antlers that are shed each year. I would never have believed the male ones were so heavy. I learned how the clothing colours of the Sami people tell which area they are from and even if they are married or single. 

Outside in the snow the ice sparkles. Tiny diamond glints mesmerise and whisper... do not go home, stay...stayyyy with us...

High on top of the fell was Narnia.  Amazingly beautiful! A wonderland.

And a frozen cafe that looked as if it belonged on the top of an iced Christmas cake.  How warm it was inside though, with an open fire.

Far up in the northern lands where darkness is more abundant in the winter months how clever Mother nature is. Such balance of dark and light. Dark, yet then the light from the pure white of snow. Dark and yet, the magical dance of polar light in the sky...

'The white hare returned home, leaving part of his heart behind in the Snow Queens' keeping. And on nights when the stars shone bright and there was ice on the ground he felt the missing part pulling him like a sting of a white bee' 

Now here at home, when I look up at the seven stars of the plough from my garden, on clear starry nights. I will remember the North and it will remind me to return one day. I have to, as how can I live without all of my heart?

X