Madness

If anywhere in our village recalls the stepped-terrace of the famous Hovis advert, this is it; an old part of the settlement, and one of four roads decending steeply to the stream called something 'Hill'. I still find it vaguely shocking to see so many parked cars - a dissonance between my Hovis-eyed vision of bucolic charm and the reality of 21st century infrastructure and lifestyle. We seldom drive along these roads - the combination of parked cars, ancient bends, narrow gaps between buildings and harrassed delivery drivers in search of our opaque, illogical addresses make it more stressful than I care for - enough to drive you mad

The handsome, porticoed, three-storey house at the bottom the hill, just over the stream bridge, is an old 'lunatic asylum'. The adjacent cottage, of which we just see the roof, is called 'Bedlam'. From the early 18th to the mid 19th centuries, the village was known for its "mad houses" - in 1740, it was the only one in Oxfordshire; in the 1840, two of only four in the county were here. Diligent research by the village history society has established all this, and shown that, at least in the 19th century, the treatment of their inhabitants was relatively humaine by the standards of the time. Little is known of the regime in earlier decades

I took this picture thinking I might rant about the importance of appropriate pointing of limestone buildings, and my dislike of the modern fashion of using pointing to highlight the outline of the stones, rather than to protect them from the elements. On reflection, it might not be good for my mental health