Thursday, January 29, 2009

Original Victorian Floor Plan

When Rob and I visited National Archives in Kew a couple of weekends ago, we didn't really have a clear idea of what we wanted to look at, not to mention where or how we would find it. There must be millions of documents there! By some miracle, the very first document we looked at was this: the original Victorian floor plan of our house. What are the chances of that??? And what an incredible looking document it is too; A3 in size with crumbly edges, like all important old documents should look!




On the close up below, you can see that what is now our dining room was once the kitchen (with a circular copper in the corner next to the fireplace). And what is now the kitchen was once the outside pantry and coal cellar. It appears the house had its own outside toilet, although it's difficult to ascertain whether this was an original feature or whether it was added later by Inkerman Barracks.

A copper, by the way, was a sort of water tank heated up by the coal fire or range. It would have been used to fill a tin bath, for example.






2 comments:

  1. How incredible is that!!!??? Wow!!! Could you keep the documents?

    I also love old parchments and anythign antiquated, have bene meaning to go there for some time, must go soon!

    Much love!

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  2. I know - we couldn't believe our luck! National Archives is an amazing place. The documents we were dealing with were Victorian, but there were people all around us who were handling documents that were hundreds and hundreds of years old. Amazing! You'll really enjoy it x

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