Friday 27 July 2007

Ye Old Speckled Hen

This is our old range in the kitchen, affectionately known as " old Speckled Hen". When we moved into our house ten years ago alot of the old features of our 1850 cottage had either been ripped out or covered up i.e. with hard board, but we could see there was a jewel underneath.
Our house sits on a hill, so the front of the house has two floors while the back has three floors. Our kitchen and bathroom sit in the basement. Where our kitchen is now, used to be the bathroom, where the bathroom is used to be the coal cellar, are you following this?
Anyway, alot of jiggery pokery went on . We wanted to find a lovely old black range to fit where the original once took pride of place so we went on the hunt. We came across the old hen in a reclamation yard in Cirencester, it was love at first sight, she is a lovely 1920's range, all brown with cream speckles, and amazingly she had been taken from a house down the road from our house, she had to be ours!
Andy put hen in, money was tight so I came up with the idea of using a piece of marble that I used to prepare my clay, this went above the range. We then used the old outside toilet doors for the surround, complete with carved graffiti from years ago and the handle to tie the airer onto. The range works a treat, but our table sits quite close to it, so it doesn't get used that much.I love it, it makes our kitchen , and I seem to have a thing for overmantels, plenty of space to put all our china and bits on. I shall do a post on the other mantels in my life at a later date, I think you can tell alot by the objects people display on their mantels, what's on yours?

1 comment:

Gena said...

How utterly lovely! and i agree, you can tell a lot from peoples mantles!The mantle in my sitting room houses candlesticks, vintage photos and a pretty clock that sadly doesnt work!