I spent a week at a place called Kentchurch Court with all of my Master's classmates. We came to do restoration and conservation work on a variety of objects, arriving on a Monday and finishing by supper on Friday. We arrived with everything we could possibly need; epoxies, saws, gilding tools, frozen proteins (rabbit skin glue, fish glue, hide glue, gesso, and compostion), scaffolding, watercolors and brushes, acetone, toolrolls, earth pigments, the list goes on and on.
It took days to assemble all the stuff and pack into vehicles. We slept in the four-poster beds and were fed great food three meals a day. At the final supper we dressed up in evening clothes and got to pretend we were very fine people, instead of workers!
Kentchurch is a huge house, built over several periods, the first of which was 1,000 years ago. It's owned by the Scudamore family, and has always been in that family. There is a a deer park, which comes very close to the house, so we often saw a large herd, and the stags crashing into each other with their antlers.
I saw some enormous, ancient trees, as you will see, and the pet peacock that dawdles about on the terrace. The estate is right on the Welsh border, and when I went for a walk I ended up in Wales in a few minutes, with the outlandish language on all signs. I even heard a Welsh radio station. It bears no relation to any language, I've been told, and it sounds it. It's wonderful that they're making such an effort to preserve it, and succeeding.
I'm going to do two blogs on Kentchurch, one on the place itself, which follows, and one on the particular project I was working on, which will be a little more technical.
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