Anniversaries and alchemy

We recently celebrated Fiddian’s 60th birthday with a long weekend of celebrations and visitors. All in all, over 80 people came to call or stay over the full week and the house and grounds were fully explored and occupied. It felt like a proper (re)christening of Bossiney Court, and we were so engulfed by the event that both of us forgot our own wedding anniversary and our one-year anniversary of moving here!

We had two big parties: one for family on the Friday and one larger one for friends, family and locals on the Saturday. Preparation for both was a team event – I have lost count of the number of people who contributed to make both events a success. Whether it was lending us chairs, making cakes and salads, clearing out the pottery, taking people to the airport and train station or (in the case of my neighbours) being kind enough to form a burger-making team when I turned up at the doorstep with a bowl of onions and a bag of steak mince, in a full on panic!

The roofers also did an amazing job to help us prepare, not only by getting the roof finished to schedule but helping to get the scaffolding down, the outdoor toilet and shower ready and clearing up the giant mess outside.

With the roof complete, stage one of the restoration is done and the house looks fabulous, but also feels more solid and secure. I have been told that the new roof should last 110 years. (Funnily enough, our previous house, in Southend-on-Sea, had a 110-year-old roof when we bought it and we did have to replace that, so I think it may well be true.) We also have new cast-iron gutters along the front side of the house, and that makes a huge difference in keeping rain water from dripping straight into the cracks in the walls and seeping through to the interior.

Speaking of rain, it poured all day on the day of our big birthday party. Several people texted to ask if we were still going ahead or not. In the end we decided to make a go of it by utilising the inside of the Pottery. We had been planning to have both parties in the Walled Garden, which had made a lovely space for an evening event on the Friday. But even with several large marquees, it was too miserable and wet to expect people to party outside, so we set up the barbeque under the marquee and spent the day on Saturday transforming the inside of the Pottery into a lovely party space.

The first floor, which is normally Fidd’s carpentry workshop, we cleared out and transformed into a sort of village hall, with long trestle tables for eating at, bunting and lighting. We used Enid’s old pottery painting room as the food and drink room, and the youngsters carried in the old avocado green bath from No. 2 and filled it with ice to cool the drinks. In the end it looked and felt very festive and it made me imagine the various other incarnations of the space – barn, pottery studio, workshop, meeting place… Seeing it filled with people again felt somehow right. It’s a place that is meant to be used and shared.

The basement/bottom floor, which used to be where Roger threw all the pots, we swept out (well, my dear friends Stan and Char swept out), filled with candles and moody lighting and used the stone counters at the end to set up a small DJ booth. I don’t have any photos that really capture the vibe of the place, but it turns out that a fairly grim and dingy barn basement can be turned into a rather magnificent space for dancing and playing music.

All in all, despite its rather sorry state, the Pottery did magnificently as a space for folk to come and congregate and have fun while staying dry and merry.

One unexpected outcome of the party week was that I got to see Bossiney Court, and North Cornwall in general, through the eyes of many people, including quite a few who were visiting for the very first time. Over and over again I saw excitement, enthusiasm and awe. As we showed people around they would often gasp or laugh in shock at the size, quirkiness and possibility of the place. In particular having nearly 20 young people camping here and talking enthusiastically to us about how much they enjoyed the house, the landscape and the undeniable magic of Bossiney, was eye-opening. It is making me see again the possibilities here, and to imagine all that went on in the past.

Having felt like something of a squatter here for the past year (I have tended to think of the house as “Enid’s half” and “Roger’s half” rather than “our house”) some strange alchemy has occurred over the past weeks, and the work we and others have done to begin the restoration, and to use the house, Pottery and gardens to house and entertain others has begun to transform not only the space but my attitude to it. I’m not sure Bossiney Court will ever feel like “mine” – it’s too old and complicated to ever truly belong to anyone, I think. I mean, we don’t even know who built it, whether or not it really was a Court House, whether Francis Drake or the Black Prince ever visited, what the coat of arms represents (I’m hopeful we can find some of this out, but early explorations have not yet turned up anything concrete). But I do at last feel like I am living here, not squatting, and that what we are doing makes sense.