I went for a walk and found that the local farmer had had a delivery of recycled building material to repair one of his paths.
I decided to do a bit of archaeology and this is what I found - a whole house!
Actually I also found fragments of roof tiles, a piece of lead sheet, broken paving stones and bricks but this is the interesting stuff.
The blue tile is from a bath room, it's made of terrazzo; you make up a coloured quartz cement mixture and then put into it fragments of coloured stones.
When sets hard, you grind it flat and then polish it so that it becomes smooth. In this case the tile is made of blue quartz, glass and a few little pieces of broken mirror to give it a real sparkle.
My guess is that it was fashionable in the 1960's.
The brown spiral is fired clay with a salt glaze. It's Victorian - mid to late 19th century. What you can see is the top of an edging paver - used to line the ornamental tiles of the front path of the house. I've got it up on its side, it would have lined both sides of the path pretending to look like rope.
The white stone is Carrera marble and where the bulldozers have broken it off or chipped off the sharp edges it sparkles in the light. On the back there's a little vein which would have given the stone a real ornamental look.
It comes from the quarries where Michaelangelo once selected the stone for his statues and which still produces marble for sculptors today.
There is a shaped edge - hand carved. It was made to be the mantelpiece above a Victorian fireplace. Victorian gentlemen would have stoked their fire and then leaned on this, rather pompously.
Like I said, a whole house, 150 years of life.
Neil Harris
(a don't stop till you drop production)
Home: helpmesortoutstpeters.blogspot.com
Contact me: neilwithpromisestokeep@gmail.com
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