Winchester Words

A sense of place and belonging is a powerful emotion. An affinity for a location, the built environment, the vegetation, the air, the view, the very soil under one’s feet spawns nationalistic extremism; but it can simply be an affectionate connection. A guardianship. Gratitude for and enhanced, untarnished memories of a place, given up freely, are so much more sustaining and positive than clinging to a sense of ownership over what cannot ever be truly possessed. Let it go and remember it fondly.

The unprepossessing poured concrete pads, laid at different levels beyond the shabby wood and glass structure, had no appeal. Plunging off the edge, towards the open view, was a flight of steep steps bordered by rough, self-sown weeds and scrub. The chalky bank, steep, stony and overgrown, divided the panorama of distant hills and folded ridges from the house. Facing the weather-beaten structure of thin glazed panels and corrugated plastic roof, across the expanse of concrete, was a new wing. A modestly sized room extending from the main house also of wood and glass but pristine. Double glazed units inset into insulated blockwork hung with wooden cladding that served to make its shabby neighbour look all the more dilapidated.

He had not opted to live here. It was a fall back. A first, rather than last, resort, but nevertheless not one he might have chosen. A shared house of six, all in their twenties, bar him, all using the same kitchen, not entirely appropriate for a man of late middle age. The first stage of recovery now stood at one side of the concrete. An extended room with its own showering facilities. The newly enlarged room had a large window and French doors that let on to the concrete that could not even be described as a patio or courtyard. The big window was set in the wall facing the garden and view. This wall teetered close to the brink of the concrete pad, leaving only sufficient room to edge along sideways, either looking, nose hard against the glass, in through the window, or pressed back against it looking through buddleia and thistles across the long view. This extra box, added to the sleeping area, formed a space in which to sit. It increased the footprint to be something more than a bedroom and the French windows demanded more from the expanse outside than rough grey cement and rusted manhole cover. The two projections from the house, one old, one new, created a fresh, undeveloped, space like a bay between two headlands.

And so the bonding began. Reclaiming part of the bank was the first stage. Bushes cut back, roots dug from the chalk and post holes sunk into the not-so-soft white rock. Sturdy square posts set into the chalky holes and concreted in, held upright by cross beams whilst setting for a true vertical. Then the alignment of thick wooden bearers across the multi-levelled pad unifying a single surface between the doors of the two projections from the main building. The ‘bay between headlands’ began to emerge. Clean lines of ridged decking planks ran from the house across the bearers and extended a metre beyond the edge of the concrete pad below. The clean bare wood, crisp and wide, lapped around the lean-to and new build making an inviting expanse created from thin air. A platform that seemed to hover, flush with both the doorways, it floated above the view like the poop of an old naval ship sailing across the city. Now gaining better access to both extensions, the restoration of the lean-to could progress. Sandpapering the weather-rutted wooden bars of the lean-to exposed the edges of thin glass held in by rusted headless pins. Cracked putty flaking out of gaps onto the decking, swept up and replaced. Primed, filled, painted and cleaned, the outside of the glass room slowly began to match the newer building opposite. The narrow glazing bars painted inside and out looked more substantial and solid. Inside the floor, lined with plastic membrane, accommodated a wooden framework, stuffed with insulation and covered with ply. Then, in a herringbone pattern, parquet blocks glued together, their pitch-black bottoms hidden from sight and fused as one by the edging sander, cleaning the surface back to bare wood. Once waxed, the blocks link the sitting room, level with those through the sliding patio door. Around the square room the dwarf wall, freshly white, ended in a skirting and trim that unified the structure and lent it a solidity lacking for a quarter of a century.

The completed decking hung out over the garden, edged with a wide rail, which had the feel of a ship. Below the rail the slope of the bank remained a bare scrub of chalkiness. The unseasonably hot days of that Spring baked the ground and encouraged one outside. The creation of a Mediterranean border becoming more appropriate with every passing hot cloudless day of sunshine in that Covid Springtime. The plants arrived. A row of lavender, two of rosemary, laid geometrically about the three mature olives, released from the confining pots to a whole new lease of life in the thin, dry soil and stones of the steep bank. Weeding the slope, standing at an angle on the incline, balanced, sweating under the hot sun. It could have been the Garrigue. With the aromatic plants in place, bark chipped and wired the bank complemented the decking perfectly. The barren wooden deck was then dressed. Large white pots of fig, bamboo, and fan palm interspersed with smaller sprays of colourful red geraniums softened the hard horizontal and vertical structure.

And so it was that this modest home contained a little bit of magic, fashioned out of the one glorious given attribute – the vista. As one approached the glazed doors into the lean-to the light was intense. The white roof covering and glazing bars framed a wide, clear blue sky anchored by the distance-muted greens and yellows and browns of the ancient hill fort. As the door slid open into the ‘inside outside’ room, the heat of early morning sun kissed you, along with the sweetness of orange blossom. Outside the windows, above the dwarf wall, vibrant red geraniums sat on a shelf so as to peek into the house and burst with colour, intensifying the greenness of the yew hedge, the blueness of the sky and the whiteness of the lean-to woodwork. Moving through the heat of the lean-to, to open double doors, the early morning chill of fresh clean air, the bamboo stirs, the bird song engages, the sun already hot. At the centre of the space a glass table nestles under a large taupe coloured umbrella framing the view of the distant hills. Cushioned chairs hunker in the crisp, dark shadow, encouraging those seated to drink in the view, along with wafting bouquets of summer herbs and a soporific buzz of hordes of drunken nectar grazing insects. Out there, time stood still. A place to remember, to take with you to the grave and be forever grateful for having shared in its stewardship. Like a portal, one’s reverie transporting the viewer, through every sense, to hotter climes, to younger days, to the embellished perfection of imagined memory.