The House That Will Outlive Us

The People Who Lived Here Before Us (And The Ones Who Will After)

It was only on our third visit, standing in what was the back kitchen (note the slightly unnerving ceiling hooks) and will be our kitchen, that I properly understood it.

The room smelt strongly of dust and damp stone and cold air. Outside, I could faintly hear chatter between Will and Fred, but the house itself was completely quiet.

I was trying to imagine where cupboards might go, how we might fit a table big enough for all of us, as well a workbench, the route hip-height children would take through the kitchen to get outside, when it landed - very suddenly and very matter-of-factly - that this room has already been a kitchen for longer than my great great great grandparents (and possibly even older than that) has existed.

I found myself wondering who stood in roughly the same spot two hundred years ago, probably thinking about food, or warmth, or money, or children, or whether winter was going to be manageable that year. Whether someone stood here excited about change. Or frightened of it. Or both.

I've noticed that we talk a lot about buying houses as if they are blank canvases. As if life begins when we arrive with our keys and paint charts and unrealistic spreadsheets.

But this house already had many chapters written when we found it.

And, if we’re lucky, we'll write a few more and the story will continue long after we’re gone.

As part of our Listed Building Application we have been working with a Heritage Consultant which at first we (very naively) eyerolled at, thinking it was just yet another cost that sounded excessive... but they have been arguably the most important and influential piece of the application puzzle; helping us understand what matters in the house, how to protect it, and how to properly justify the changes we’re proposing. Their report has also been some of the most fascinating reading so far, revealing the chapters this house has already lived through, and offering small glimpses into the people who once called it home.

There was Jacob Hinde, who took the parsonage lease in 1766 and remained here for nearly 60 years; Mrs Mumford, the tenant farmer in the 1830s who is credited with putting the farm back into order; and later, in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, the Taylors and then the Walker family, who each lived here for more than four decades.

1878 description of farm from Sales Particulars (Oxford, Bodleian Libraries)

Over the last few months I keep finding myself thinking about the ordinary days that happened here.

Not the big historical moments or anything that would make it into records - but the repetitive, small, human ones that make up all our lives. The breakfasts eaten standing up. The boots left by the door. The winters that felt too long. The summers where everything felt possible again.

Someone must have stood at a sink in this house and stared out at the same stretch of sky we see now, worrying about something that felt completely insurmountable at the time. Someone must have rocked a baby in these rooms at three in the morning. Someone must have sat at a table - long before we existed - trying to work out whether there was enough money to fix something that had broken.

I wonder about the women, especially. How much of their lives were contained within these walls. How many meals were cooked. How many conversations happened quietly, after children were asleep, about what to do next. Whether anyone ever stood in this house and thought: this is enough. Or whether it always felt slightly precarious; dependent on weather and harvest and luck.

The house itself feels completely neutral about all of it. Which I find very comforting.

It has seen people arrive convinced they were permanent. It has seen people leave who probably thought they had failed. It has seen celebrations, sick days, ordinary Tuesdays, and probably long stretches of nothing much happening at all.

And despite the holes in the roof and roots growing up through the floor, it is still here. Still doing the same job. Holding warmth when there is warmth. Holding noise when there is noise. Sitting quietly when there isn’t.

There is something deeply reassuring in knowing that lives are messy and uncertain and unfinished - and the place that holds them can remain steady anyway.