Heritage Open Days: from Victoriana nuttiness to self-sufficiency
Finally this article makes me wonder what you might nominate as the most potentially unlikely but interesting rural heritage building worth visiting in your area? It explains how two very different homes amongst hundreds nationally are being opened us part of this fetival. It tells us of a Victorian Cottage in Nottingham
Everything that could be restored has been, with Saunders spending eight years trawling auctions, fairs, shops and eBay to fill it with authentic fittings and artefacts.
This weekend, members of the public will be able to see his house as he takes part for the first time in England’s annual Heritage Open Days project.
A hundred miles south, Pat and Tony Almond are also preparing to open their very different home to the public. The 1968 house is part of an ordinary estate in Welwyn, Hertfordshire, and the couple live as close to The Good Life – the popular 1970’s sitcom about self-sufficiency – as possible, although they stress: “We don’t have pigs. We like our neighbours.”
Both Saunders and the Almonds are showing that heritage does not simply mean castles and churches and stately homes. “It’s about the things that are near and dear to us and that can, literally, be on our doorstep,” said Heritage Open Days manager Katja Condy. “It is about all the things that make our communities and our neighbourhoods special whether it is a streetscape or a building, or it could also be stories that have been passed down generations. It is about things which make places distinct.”