However, the picture about heating water for the household is surely a mistake. It is really a bread oven as in many old houses and cottages. A fire of wood faggots was lit inside the oven with the door open in order to heat up the inside brickwork. When it was judged to be hot enough the ashes were scraped out and put into the arched opening below and then the risen loaves were loaded into the oven using the wooden ‘peel’ shown in the picture and the oven door closed. The peel was lso used to take the loaves out when baked. I have used such an oven many times for demonstrations in a historic miller’s house at Pakenham Water mill in Suffolk.

“I carry the sun in a golden cup
and the moon in a silver bag.” — Keats

By far, the most evocative death mask I have ever seen. I expected his eyes to
flutter and blink, at any moment.

Thank you, GA.

I realise it has been a long passage of correspondence – one way for the most part – from you to me. And I am so very grateful.

Thank you for waltzing me through my grandmother’s backstreets in London, England, to my wee seaside cottage in Aotearoa New Zealand.

Your writing and photography sharpen my senses, so finely tuned. Restorative. Delightful.

The Gentle Reader has come to inhabit a most precious and influential place in my life.

– Saige England, author of The Seasonwife.