Photos from Jill Angood, and from the Townhead (where I was born and bred) archive rescued after the buildings had been left derelict and looted in the mid to late nineties. Brilliantly, the place is now restored to its former ("we've got big plans for this room...") glory, and even improved by the microclimate created by trees we planted there when I was tiny (it could be a pretty bleak place back then, see previous post). It is now off grid and powered by the wind and solar power proposed at the beginning but not realized for thirty years! And the recent unpleasant legal battle to keep the place from the nasty hands of developers is won and done. I spent the day there on saturday and I'm a bit speechless about the experience...
Pete, I have lots more pics like these which I'll send or bring up.
4 comments:
really looking forward to hearing about this trip, and how it happened at all. as for the photos ...
(that's what I call potty training)
p
Bugger, I thought you knew about it but weren't coming because of all the traveling you'd been doing...
I don't know why I didn't mention it when I saw you in Leicester, except that I hadn't decided to go then. Probably because of the slightly depressing time we went in about 1994. This time was much more heartening, and I played tunes with Sally in your stead.
of course! it was 35 years on. I actually thought about that anniversary only a few weeks ago; I didnt get any notice of it though. i would have liked to have been there, for auld lang syne. Did you know there were some folks at the white house who had just moved out from Townhead? I didnt meet them, since I didnt hear about it until sunday, by when they'd gone, having abandoned a soaking tent in the night. Most of that Mr Fox crowd were folk I'd known in my Morris days in the early 70's ...
who else was there?
It did really feel like you should have been there. I got a tour of the way the electrical system works, from a guy called Pete in fact, he's starting a business installing wind and solar power, and lives in the top terrace (which is almost all occupied now).
Jill and Chris and Laurel were there (I stayed with them), and Gilla, Sam, Sally, Neville(!), Caroline, Pete Armstrong, Jinny (spelling, also I'm mixing up with Ginia maybe, who wasn't there) and also Freer was there for a while (he rescued the albums, Neville rescued the minutes). Also lots of people who knew small me, but who I didn't really remember, and have probably since forgotten again...
Anyway, sod all this typing. I'll give you a ring later.
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