I think I mentioned a while ago that we had a lot of people viewing our house, most of them were obviously not really interested in buying but just getting a look at an older type of interior. I even think that some of them probably knew the people who lived in the house years ago and just wanted to get a closer look, maybe they had never been upstairs before. Think of how some of the characters in Angela Thirkell’s books are desperate to see inside some of the local properties, the attics always seem to be popular! I’m doing this post for posterity really, just in case we ever get any grandchildren and they grow up wanting to know what sort of place their dads grew up in. The house was given the name Dalserf by the original owners I think.

The photo below is of the cornicing in our living room. I well remember that this was the first thing which I painted not long after we moved in 26 years ago. We had always had modern houses before and cornicing was a novelty to me. I decided to make the design stand out even more by painting the internal part brown and the rest of it cream. About one yard into the project I wished I hadn’t bothered, it was so footery (fiddly). I still like it though. That bookcase is the only piece of IKEA furniture which we have and it’s so tall that it won’t fit into the new house, we’ll have to take a saw to the bottom of it!

The one below is of the same room, the glass shade is an art deco one and we really like it but it might not fit into the new place.

The photo below is of the cornicing in the sitting room, a place reserved for posh visitors and Sundays originally I’m sure.

The photo below is in the sitting room again, the ceiling rose, we’ve just replaced the centre part as we’re taking that light fitting with us, it was orginally Aunt Jenny’s.

Below is the sitting room again, the window panelling is an elegant feature I think. Note the boxes, that’s just a few of them. The wall clock is an American one, made by the millions I’m sure, by the Ansonia Clock Company of New York, it originally belonged to Jack’s grandparents.

The photo below is the sitting room again, you can see the new plaster at the fireplace where we had to have the damp work carried out. At the right of the photo is what we call a press (built-in cupboard.) We have four, very handy for books – don’t know what we’re going to do without them.

The room below was originally the kitchen, a biggish room which we now have as a dining room, but this alcove with our pine dresser in it is what is called in Scotland a bed recess. Originally it would have had a box bed fitted into it and a curtain drawn over the alcove for privacy. It was the days when everybody had a maid and that was where she slept, poor soul, she probably didn’t get much further than the kitchen and the wash house all week. In a smaller house the children probably slept in a bed recess.

The room below is meant to be a downstairs bedroom but Jack nabbed it as a study when we moved in and we had the bookshelves built in by a joiner because they would have ended up all wonky if we had tackled the job. They housed Jack’s large SF collection and we have no idea where they are all going to go in the new place, in the loft maybe! As you can see by the boxes we’re in a complete guddle (mess, muddle) but that’s to be expected I suppose, I just didn’t realise how much stuff we have.

And that’s some of the period details of Dalserf which I thought you might be interested to see.