Temple

We're full but we've also Rob & Di staying tonight so over the last few days we've been moving junk around to expose an additional room. This room has a few names.  As we bought the house it was called the Smoking Room (something we tweaked to emphasise it's the Old Smoking Room) but used as the office.
  
It's part of the extensions in the 1860's by the Rev.Francis Hopkinson, and is presumably where he and friends gathered to have a smoke.  The wall behind me has Byron's ode to tobacco painted on it and what amounts to 'This is where the Rev. FH and friends hung out in 1880' in Latin underneath.

Fast forward to the 1960s and one of the bridge engineers of the M50 had bought the house and rented out this room to a couple with whom we've had some correspondence. At that time the room was called 'The Temple' though whether that was their name for it or a hangover from the previous ownership as the "Lucidor House of Healing" (which is another curious story...) isn't known.

For most of it's time since we've moved in it's provided elbow room - a bit of a Room of Requirement - though we did recover the original fireplace and put the log burner in it.  Having cleared it, we're planning on keeping it clear, giving it a coat of paint and probably making it a secondary dining/work room for us for when we have guests - thereby simplifying the multiplex nature of our office-lounge-dining-TV-library room.