First Annual Review

February 20 2016 : it is exactly a year since we became the owners of The Old Rectory. There is no cake to cut but it is worth reviewing what we have achieved in that time, remembering that we gave ourselves two years to sort out the house and ten years to sort out the garden. The thumbnails below are active : click on a picture to see a larger scale version.

The house has been worked on more or less consistently since we took ownership, limited by the need to plan and, in some cases, to seek Listed Building Consent [LBC].

The first task was to get some heat into the house – and slowly too as it must have been well over two years since the last time it was warm and we didn't want the structure to move with swift drying out. The oil fired heater was well past its sell-by date so we ordered a gas connection and in the meantime a new gas fired boiler was installed. The gas connection happened on April 1st and the new boiler was fired up a day or so later. For the time being the old radiators and heating system were used but by September we were sufficiently advanced with our thinking for new radiators to be installed in the southern range and for a sophisticated control system to be created.

We had already identified that the electrical installation was safe but an aesthetic disaster with all sockets and cabling being surface mounted. We therefore instigated phase one of a rewiring project in the southern range. That happened in June and included the dining room, despite it being part of the 16th century house. It left a lot of making good to do where cables and sockets had been chased into walls. As far as possible we used electronic switching to avoid chasing for light switches.

The other overall task was to repair the roof where necessary, point the chimneys, replace the rainwater goods and replace the shingles on the front façade. It made sense to also paint the eaves while the contractor was up there. The work was scheduled for the second half of August which meant that Nature decided to make it the wettest period for many a year. The work was eventually finished – but it was early October by then.

In terms of individual rooms :

• plasterwork has been made good and painted in the dining room; we accepted the existing carpet for the short term; decorating included new light fittings;
• we have made good and decorated bedroom 2 to the point where it is habitable; coving was installed at ceiling level and a new built-in cupboard created on the wall where the fireplace used to be; the carpet is down and we selected horizontal oak slat blinds for this room; painting is not complete but the walls are clean and all dusty work in the room is finished;
• the lounge is further advanced than bedroom 2 but not totally finished as we are waiting for the plumber to install the gas fire in a new oak surround fireplace; otherwise it is finished with plaster made good, coving installed, painting complete and the carpet down [mental note : we still need lampshades!]; in here we selected vertical fabric blinds;
• the hall has also had a lot of attention, complicated by being on two levels and work having to wait because we changed the original staircase with its cupboard underneath [making for a claustrophobic downstairs space] for a light and airy solid oak stair; decorating is now about 80% complete, after which we will be able to install the new oak flooring;
• finally there is the downstairs toilet which now has a new cistern and wash basin but is only functional, not really decorated; the door has been re-hung to a more logical configuration; talking of doors : seven were taken off and stripped in total but only four have been varnished so far and only three are back in place;

One task is neither house nor garden but both. All along the outside of the west walls of the house was a concrete footpath ... higher than the damp proof course of the house! That is now 95% removed - work in progress - and the vertical slate 'protection' of the DPC removed. That, of course, leaves the task of creating a path at a lower level when the kitchen garden is already maybe 600 mm higher than the DPC. There is also the small matter of the mountain of rubble created by demolishing the concrete.

The garden has also been worked on continuously but with a strong sense of 'wait and see' in case something hidden from view made an appearance. That didn't mean there was not much to do as all 6,800 m² were overgrown with brambles, nettles and ivy with some trees that our neighbour had wanted down for years and a beech hedge which was becoming a forest. Even the shrubs and trees were running wild and needed severe pruning.

The Diocese had divided the glebe land, giving some to the school just up the road. We had an obligation to erect a fence [just over 100 metres of it] along the new boundary under the terms of our purchase agreement. About one third of the way along the route was an old crack willow with a breached dam that had formed a pond once upon a time. In discussion with the school we agreed to route the fence around the tree and to reinstate the dam so that the school had an additional teaching aid, a wild life pond. The fence was erected in May but there is only a temporary dam, the permanent one will have to wait for the summer of 2016.

In total about 10 trees were taken down along the western boundary of the home garden, some by a professional and some by ourselves. In addition, we took out about 10 metres of the holly mess [it was probably a hedge once upon a time] between the home garden and the glebe land and freed the oak tree in that area of the large ivy that was slowly strangling it.

Overall we have made progress in the home garden but little in the glebe land :

• the west roadside beech hedge has been brought back under control by chainsaw so that from 2016 we can slowly start shaping it neatly again; unfortunately it is about a metre back from the boundary so there is a strip of weed infested land between the pavement and the hedge : something else to tackle in 2016;
• the east roadside is a mess of old shrubbery which extends back into the east garden; we have been bringing all of that back under control, including freeing up other trees being strangled by ivy; 2016 should be used to plan what to do here for the longer term;
• the kitchen garden was a mess of brambles interspersed with other weeds; the brambles have been cut down but still need eradicating and large parts of the area have been blanketed with old carpets to mulch-kill the weeds; there is a small pond here which has been cleared, at which point we found lots of small gold fish!;
• the east garden is laid to grass – a small sloping meadow really; at the northern end of the eastern boundary we have been bringing a mess of rhododendron and wisteria under control and at the southern end we have been trying to keep the area around another small pond and the stream beyond contained; none of it is easy and the grass is very coarse with a clump of Rhus run wild;
• the southern garden has been another case of fighting with nature; the wonderful ornamental cherry has been freed from its ivy; the clump of shrubs beyond it is being whittled down and the brambles reduced but we have still to tackle some young trees – seedlings of existing trees; on the southern part of the western boundary we have cleared a lot more material, both brambles and shrubs;
• the work in the glebe land has mainly been limited to clearing by moving the site of the fire [needed to dispose of the vast amount of prunings] with some spraying to clear footpaths; two highlights are the planting of a Salix x sepulcralis 'Chrysocoma', the golden weeping willow, on the banks of Winter Stream and the felling of two ash trees in the close part of the land, one dying and the other at the request of our neighbour;

So, are we on track? Probably not for completing the house in two years but maybe within 2¹/₂ years? As for the garden - only time will tell! All in all, however, we can say that we have done well.