High Tide at Blakeney

After all the blustery wind and rain from Storm Brendan keeping me awake last night, I was a bit bleary-eyed when B and I went to Blakeney this morning.  It was high tide and so the boats moored along the quay were at pavement level.  It was unusual not to be looking down on them as we walked alongside.  The marshes behind the quay were flooded.

After securing a coffee from the delicatessen we went along to the monthly U3A talk, the subject of which was the restoration of the wonderful 'David Parr' house in Cambridge.  This terraced Victorian house belonged to an 'artworkman' who carried out decoration and painting in churches and country houses for F Leach Company (they carried out commissions for Arts and Crafts designers, including William Morris).  David Parr spent 40 years hand-painting the interior of his own home in the same style and to the same excellent standard.  The amazing thing is that because the house stayed in the same family until it was bought by Tamsin Wimhurst in 2009, most of the original painted interior remained. To enable her to preserve and restore the house a charity www.davidparrhouse.org was set up in 2014.  Much work has been done and the house is now open to visitors, although numbers are restricted so that the fabric of the house is conserved.  Tamsin's passion and enthusiasm was infectious and her research into the history of David Parr and F Leach company was a fascinating insight into the social history of the people and the time they lived in.
A most enjoyable morning indeed.