A weekend in my own little castle

In February, I was invited to spend a long weekend in a Landmark Trust property of my choice, and to write about my experience for their website. For those who don’t know, the Landmark Trust restores historic buildings in the UK - many of them abandoned or derelict - and then rents them out as holiday cottages. It’s an organisation that I’ve followed for many years and I was delighted to be invited to experience one of their houses first-hand. Below is my account of the experience, which is also published on their website.

Driving through the West Country on the way to Shute Gatehouse, I was reminded of the opening chapter of The Children of Green Knowe, where Tolly must traverse a biblical flood to visit his grandmother in his mystical ancestral home. Weeks of rain had created a world under water, the fields transformed to lakes, reflecting skies still full of storm clouds.

This is probably why some people don’t take English holidays in February. The weather can conspire against you, and you may need a certain intimacy with mud to get through. But approaching the crenellated facade of the Gatehouse in the early dark, my headlights caught clumps of snowdrops all over the banks, and I was reminded why I love these desolate early months: they are full of breadcrumbs for spring.

The greatest winter pleasures lie in contrasts, and here there was solidity against a liquid world. The turning of a giant key in an iron lock; the long views from the Gatehouse windows; the rugged heft of the stone doorways: I felt like a child in my own, private castle. There was no need to venture out into the weather. We unpacked our bags of groceries and settled down for the evening.

By the next morning, I wished I’d come here alone. I had tentatively packed my laptop - as I always do - and when I woke, I wanted to do nothing more than write. I’d been working on edits for my next book, and felt forever deferred from sinking into my own attention, truly concentrating on the task at hand. Here, in the deep peace of the Devon countryside, I felt I might finally be able to do it.

As my family slept in, I wandered about the place examining the metalwork around the windows, the warps and bubbles in the thick glass, the feathery tool-marks left in the masonry. There were thumb prints in the ceramic base of the lamp by the sofa, and the blue china bowl on the window sill had been carefully pieced back together at some point in its history. Everything was hand-made in this place, mended, maintained. It felt like such a human environment in which to make my own work. I sat at the dining table, drinking tea and finessing words. By the time everyone else woke up, I was ready to explore the outside world.

Whenever we left the house, we faced the water again. It gathered in the dips of roads so that our car splashed great walls around it when we drove through. As we neared Seaton, the river was so swollen that it felt monumental, rushing down toward the open sea like a life-force asserting itself.

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We stood for a long time on the beach watching huge waves crash against the shore, spray spattering our faces. The wind battered around us, but it was almost warm, almost smelling of spring.

I came home with a few more words written, a sense of being just one craftsperson among many, and - most of all - feeling like I’d stood astride winter and spring, sensed the cold months receding, and the warmer ones coming in. It was wonderful to encounter the year’s change in such a magnificent old building, watching the darkness recede from the safety of my high tower.

I stayed at Shute Gatehouse. Thanks to the Landmark Trust for hosting me!