La Vie En Rose: December 2011

Lundi le 12 decembre dawned, or at least at 09h00 did when I woke up to a shinning sun is a brightly clear blue sky. Fast forward 8 and half hours to a small village in Normandy and it was so cold I couldn’t feel my hands by the time I’d unloaded my few things needed for a couple of nights at our holiday home before catching a ferry back to blighty. So it seems to be some truth in the stories I’ve heard that winters in the Loire are milder than up north!

Yesterday, I switched from solid digging (and I mean solid, as in the solid rock I’m now excavating) to clearing out assorted stable fittings and the original partly collapsed staircase from the corner of the barn ready for more reducing levels.

The first 2 metre section of steps was long gone, but the basic support structure (newel post, outer string and handrail) was still there. I’d found several dates inscribed in the stone upstairs, the oldest being 1812, so I was reluctant to demolish the steps, so set about dismantling them. To remove the lower structure, I took a hammer and drift to the two oak pegs of the mortise and tenon joints securing the handrail and string to the newel. The tapered pegs popped right out and the tenons slid out of the mortises like they were only assembled a week ago. Craftsmen knew how to build things well 200 years ago and we certainly wont mention the war, well not tonight Josephine ;~)

Digging out at the base of the stairs was relatively easy as there was an infill of sand and clay tile some 450mm deep. Besides salvaging some 30 odd tiles, which is a bonus, as you can find them for sale in depot ventes for several euros each, I uncovered a stoppered liquid filled glass bottle and put it aside for further investigation.

All in all, I’d excavated by hand, just about half of the 50 m2 floor area to a depth of half a metre and created an evolving spoil pattern in the back garden which will require some creative landscaping scheme if I haven’t got to load it all onto the truck and cart it somewhere else.

So here we are, the dig is officially closed for the season and I am writing this in Normandy, preparing to hop across the channel in a couple of days to spend a happy Christmas with the bride and family on the Isle of Wight, while outside the wind is doing it’s best to encourage the roof to fly south for the winter. Hopefully all will be well, but stay tuned for the next instalment and see how things progress!

Anyway, some have asked for more pictures, so here you go . . .