We live in a very standard English two-up and two-down, probably built some time before the first world war. It’s on Mafeking Road, in a little neighbourhood of streets (and houses) named after battles of the Anglo-Boer war (Mafeking, Colenso, Belmont, Ladysmith, and Kimberly), which ended in 1902, and I suspect that this neighbourhood was developed for returning veterans of those wars – the Queen’s Lancashire Regiment was active in it, and are based here in Preston.
Of course, we don’t know the provenance of the house exactly, but we do know that compared to many of its kind, it has been little interfered with. One of its features, and one we are very fond of, is a set of glass-paned double doors between the two reception rooms on the ground floor. When the house was built, the front room, into which these doors lead would have been the parlour, reserved for visiting company for weddings and funerals, most likely. The main room would have functioned as the all-purpose cooking, living and even washing room, with a small scullery at the back. The scullery was expanded into a full kitchen, probably when indoor plumbing was put in, this room is now our living room, and the front room is Martin’s study. This picture is of the light in Martin’s study through the patterned glass doors – it manages to combine being warm and inviting with being rather surreal, to my mind.