The photos from our Hafod walk

 With Tam here, I thought, great she can sort out the problem I had with needing ID and what have you to load my photos from my camera.  Would you believe, when I tried yesterday they loaded straight away, no ID needed! Typical . . .  So here are some of them from our lovely walk - I took lots so won't overload you with all of them.

As you can see, Thomas Johnes had a fairly remote setting in the Cambrian mountains with the Hafod estate.  It was close to the Lead mines which he owned and which obviously gave his family a good income.  He had connections with Croft Castle, which I visited last year.  As his mother was Elizabeth Knight of Croft Castle.  The upstairs of the house was totally given over to illustrations of the house and estate at Hafod.

Much of the estate had clearly been planted with conifers, which would have hemmed in the walks and vistas designed by Johnes, but this area has now been logged and just stumps are left.  We took what they called the Ladies' Walk, along by the river.  

Tam and Rosie by the entrance to Mrs Johnes' garden.

This reminded me of some Scottish rivers - shallow and open.

By the ruins of the house - demolished totally in 1956, and literally just a huge pile of rubble, with only slabs of dressed stone suggesting its grandeur.  What a loss.  I don't know who this figure represented, but since Johnes' daughter's name was Mariamne, a Biblical name (she was Herod's wife), and his book and ancient manuscript collection (sadly destroyed in the fire of 1807) was second to none, one may assume this could be a Classical figure.

However, the lovely stables remained and you can make yourself tea, coffee or squash in what was the tack room. We desperately needed a cold drink by then and proper swigged down a glassful each.  When I worked with horses near Salisbury, we had these stable blocks and boy were they difficult to clean out - I can remember a stiff broom, Jeye's fluid and a hoofpick being used, but my bosses were very impressed by my stable management and said "you could eat your dinner of Jennie's stable floors"!!!

In the walled garden outside, this lovely yellow rose was blooming.  I assume it is an old variety, but haven't discovered which it might be.

Looking back towards where the house once stood.  What a view it had.

This is the view going back towards the church.  Just superb.  Tam loves this area she's moved to.

Below: a model of the stunning Gothic house which was Hafod Uchtryd.

Inside the church (which was rebuilt after a disastrous fire in 1932).  Apparently it was down to the central heating - a length of piping from the boiler was full of soot (it was somewhat circuitous in its leaving the building) and this caught fire.

The sad remains of (below) the incredibly detailed monument in memory of Thomas and Jane Johne's only daughter, Mariamne, who died aged just 26, after a short illness.  Apparently she had suffered from ill health most of her life.

How sad that Thomas Johne's grieving head is now tucked on the base of the memorial.

It was such a beautiful house.

Fragments of the Dutch stained glass from the fire-shattered windows have been reinstated into these.

The stunning font survived. 

Having Tam and Rosie arrive yesterday cheered me up.  I tried a new recipe in the morning from a carefully saved copy of Baking Heaven magazine upstairs (sadly, that didn't survive being published throughout Covid).  The recipe is for Carrot Cake Scones but mine look rather more like large cookies :)  Yet they taste good and are very filling.  I didn't bother with the cream cheese and icing sugar icing.  For tea I made a batch of cheese pastry, baked a pie case blind and then filled it with a tin of good Stewing steak (I used to get it for Keith) and put a lid on it.  This hit the spot and we have the other half for tonight.

We had a stroll with Rosie, and spotted some lovely big blackberries up the lane so I went back and picked those.  Just under a pound have gone into the freezer.  

Then we had fun looking at the contents of one of the bags of Tam's "stuff" and there is some gorgeous deep red Medieval style curtain/upholstery fabric which she got from a Charity shop.  Sadly I have nothing to reupholster and my windows are too big/too small/it's the wrong colour for the rooms . . . so she'll have to Fleabay it and a smaller length of dark red and gold patterned fabric.

Now we are choosing wallpaper for the guest bedroom and have found a fabulous one in Dunelm.   I took a page out of a magazine which has exactly the colour green I want in there - and it's on tongue and groove walls as we have in parts there.  Looks great.  Will have to get it scanned and matched . . .  More of this later.  It has got me quite excited and given me something to look forward to.

D has been in touch and the furniture arrived safely and looks great in her house.  I'm so pleased they went to the right new forever home.