Dovecote Exhibition

We are getting there. 

This week we started to put all the information about dovecotes onto our huge doves. We have also put some of the children's poems which are really good on the birds. There is however lots of fiddly things to finish off before we open on Easter Monday.

Jake Allen is editing the video that the children made in the school and we have placed one of the poems on the door of the dovecote to tempt our visitors to enter.                                                                                                                                                    

The Privy Restoration 

We were only able to save some of the clay roof tiles as most had fallen into the privy when some of the roof timbers collapsed.  The tiles had to be matched up with our existing ones. These were sourced in Wisbech. Having re-roofed the building I spent three happy days digging out the privy sump.

To my surprise it had not been cleaned out when I bought the manor in 1968. Luckily I was wearing rubber gloves for it was filled with old poo and animal bones. I also recovered some pottery and four glass bottles. These will go on display in the Privy exhibition. The old poo went onto the garden as excellent manure!

The last person to used the privy was in 1968, probably one of our builders who used  The Daily Mirror for toilet paper.  There were fragments of very grotty  bits of paper with a date still visible. Needless to say I have not kept these for display! 

I had to climb down into the sump in order to clean it out. It also meant crawling right inside underneath the wooden seats. The sump is large and well made and would have taken a large amount of waste. I am glad that I did not have to clean it out when it was fresh waste!

The Privy is now restored the two loo seats cleaned up.

The  door had been repaired and repainted 

When this privy was built Queen Victoria was on the throne, but not on this one!

The Privy Restoration

The Privy Restoration 

We had to remove the roof timbers, which were rotten and covered in Russian Vine tentacles. It made a fantastic bonfire!

I began to worry if we would ever manage to restore the building. There are not many privy's left in the county, many of them have been pulled down, or turned into small garden outbuildings. So we became very determined that our privy would survive.

We also had to remove all the old plaster, as most of it was falling off and not repairable. On doing so we uncovered a carved stone. The inscription states that Mr John King is a carver of stone in London 1686.

We thought that we knew all the history of the Prebendal Manor, but here was some new information.

We think that the stone was reused as building stone when the Prebendal Manor solar was demolished in 1798.

Dr Samuel Brunsell had been one of the prebendaries of Nassington in 1660. His brother's daughter married Christopher Wren. When Samuel died his window was given permission to remain in the manor. It is possible that due to her brother-in law's connections in London she knew where to find good stone carvers.The Prebendal Manor was altered during that period. Mr King may have undertaken the work.  

So we had an interesting interlude from the building works while we researched the inscribed stone.

The Privy Restoration

These are the Russian Vine roots that did all the damage to the privy

It was time to get the cement mixer our and start the rebuilding.My children gave me the mixer many years ago and it has proved to be really useful.  However we only use lime mortar mixes on this site. Using strong cement mixes does more damage because the building becomes too ridged.