Somerset

Have you read Burnett’s Secret Garden? Or Tana French’s The Likeness? Then you might have an idea of what you expect, what you see in your head, when your friend tells you he’s bought a place in vaguely rural Ireland.

You’d be right.

This place is almost unreal. A little over two acres, I think, and the people who sold it actually just live next door now in a slightly smaller house, downsizing since their children grew up and flew the nest. [Nope, wait, Hawk is telling me as he’s reading this that it’s the meadow seen in the picture above that’s a little over two acres; the whole lot is a little over five.]

Not that the children flew far… the daughter lives in the house right next door to the parents (or maybe one just a few houses down….? The point is that they all loved this street so much, they stayed, even when they decided to sell this particular house). [Another Hawk edit: yes, she lives next door to her parents who live next door to the house she grew up in. BTW I met her and her dog Frankie while she was out walking the other day and I wish I could have sat down and had some tea with her, she was lovely!] I love that there are doors in this house that the daughter painted when she was a child, and not only did the parents leave the art on the doors, but Hawk and Jeanne have left the art on the doors! She’s now a graphic designer, and is actually embarrassed that her door artwork is so bad. I took pictures, you can see them in my album. They are NOT bad.

There are all sorts of hidden corners and things on this property, and they all contain beautiful hidden historical bits. I think the original house was built in the… help me out here, Hawk, the 1700s? This current house was built in the late 60s, modeled after the original house that was here (I’ve seen a painting and it really does look like it’s exactly the same house).

Hawk has tried to explain house building and renovation to me, and it’s confusing as all get-out. You can build whatever you want as long as there’s even just part of an original wall standing, because that’s considered a renovation. But you can’t build from scratch unless you get the plans approved, and to get the plans approved the house has to match certain criteria of what houses looked like when they were built in this area in the 1700s. There are places with no houses on them that go up for sale for years because nobody wants to try to get the plans through. Or it’ll say on the listing “has been plan approved!” which doesn’t mean you can build the house they got approved, it just means that plans have been approved in the past so chances are good that you can get plans approved again in the future.

Confused? You won’t be, after this episode of… SOAP.

If you know Hawk, and you remember what his house on 6th was like, this little brick area reminds me SO MUCH of the one he put in there, in the back!

At one point, when the public practicing of [Hawk edit: that would be just Catholicism; Protestantism was required] religion was against the law, estates that were big enough sometimes had a hidden chapel in among all their other barny outbuildings. That’s what this is. Imagine finding a hidden chapel on your property, that was a few hundred years old!!! Hawk has turned it into his workshop, which I love. It goes back to what I was saying the other day about Making Things being the purest form of worship and celebration, for after all, if we were made in the image of a Maker, are we not made to Make?

I am pleased to say that I did not burst into flames when stepping into his chapel workshop.

Y’all, this view. I’m so glad I was able to get over here and see it. I took a gazillion pictures. If you, too, would like to live out all your childhood Secret Garden dreams, you can see the rest of my photos of this amazing place here. xoxo y’all