Description
by Janet Dyson
Brick House stands in the centre of Great Bardfield Hight Street, its symmetrical Georgian facade somewhat incongruous in this largley medieval setting.
Houses have multiple lives and this book tells stories of Brick House throuth time combining history, memories, contemporary accounts, conversations, journal entries and reflections to create a patchwork text. The title Spirits of Place reveals the author’s consciousness of the traces left by those who have lived in Brick House. Most notable of these previous occupants are the artists Edward and Charlotte Bawden who lived there from 1930 to 1970. During that period many creative, interesting, talented men and women lived in or passed through this iconic house.
The book brings together a diverse cast of characters, some living, some dead. As the current owner of the house the author descibes herself as ‘living in the story’, her life overlapping with the lives of those who have lived there before, living between past and present. She emphasises that ‘our sense of place is deeply embedded in the stories we tell’. She reminds is that the life of a house is a story of time – and that there is never one single story.
Paperback
Publisher: BTL Press
ISBN: 9780995712683
