A walk around St Cuthbert's House

Around the outside

St Cuthbert's House sits prominently on the Main Street (which is a relative term. It's only used by the local residents...)

The old church didn’t have a lot of land, and so most of the outside area has needed to be given over to hard-standing, primarily for car parking, at the behest of the planners. This was one of their strange insistences. Parking is not an issue up here, and we would have much rather created a garden area… but car park it is. Although, it is still possible to sit out and enjoy a glass of wine on a summer evening. It’s enclosed by a fence which provides some privacy.

It took us several days to hack off the horrid render which covered the outside walls of the building.  When we did, we found some rather attractive, if rough, stone – which we decided not to cover up again.  Although it did take a very long time to rake those joints and point them again…

 

At the front there are two entrance vestibules, one of which provides the ‘front’ entrance which we don't use much now because the old door is a bit temperamental. These vestibules were added about 30 years after the church was built, and were built in brick rather than stone. So we've left them rendered, and painted them. One elderly resident in the village told me that he remembers coming to church as a child, and the women entered through one door whilst the men came in the other. We've relaxed this rule now…

 

The original windows in the vestibules have been expertly rebuilt in their original casings. And so have the enormous great windows which run almost the full length of the front elevation – quite a task! Large areas had to be chopped out and replaced, but they look like new now.

The glass is 'tinted' and carries a yellow-brownish cross surrounded by green glass. We had many broken panes to replace, and whilst we could replace the green ones fairly easily, we could not find any brown to match at all. The cross needed to remain intact, so David took the cracked pane from the frame, then carefully replaced the broken glass into the renovated frame with silicone. See if you can spot it.

After they had been renovated and repaired, these windows needed to be painted. Jill spent days climbing and balancing on wobbly scaffold towers to do this work, and I went up there only to deliver cups of tea at regular intervals. I cannot show you photographs here, lest a Health & Safety inspector should read this.

The old wrought-iron railings and gates were inpretty bad shape, but they’ve been shot-blasted, repaired and galvanised by William, a local iron-worker.  We also managed to salvage some of the cast iron downpipes and guttering, and it’s amazing to see them looking so good with a few coats of paint.

 

One of the biggest debates with the planners concerned the paint finish which they would agree to be applied to the previously rather drab cement-rendered face of the church. Then we discovered that the render wasn't actually attached to the underlying stone any more, but was preparing itself to drop on someone's head - which gave us that perfect reason to remove the render, and expose the stone face of the church. Although this was very hard and difficult work, we're much happier to see the stone again, than a painted cement render!

Next stop - The Cuthbert Room