 |
The Woman Who Moved Her House Brick by Brick
Some years after the love of her life, a gifted Shakespearean actor she planned to marry, died prematurely, Ms. May Alice Savidge bought a house to restore in 1947. A few years later, when the town council told her that her house was to be destroyed to make way for a road, she fought the town... and lost. So when the bulldozers reached her gate, at the age 0f 58, her response was to number each beam and pane of glass so that her home could be reassembled like a giant jigsaw puzzle!She found a site in the seaside town of Wells-next-the-Sea in Norfolk, and obtained planning permission and laid foundations. A lorry made the round trip to Norfolk 11 times to carry every part of the house. And so began a life of hardship. She had no electricity and worked by the light of Victorian paraffin lamps. She used an alarm clock to set herself targets each day, noting how many nails she extracted from oak beams per hour, as she dismantled the house and prepared for rebuilding. Two years later, the framework was fixed to the foundations by a local carpenter and May started to infill the brickwork. She had no experience of brickwork, but was determined to lay every single brick perfectly. It would be another eight years before the roof tiles were put in place and the property made watertight. By the time she was into her 70s, May had moved in and the house stood proudly in its new gardens, each old oak beam in place, the brickwork nearly complete and many of the walls plastered. Savidge continued to work on the house until she died at the age of 82! |
 |
||||
 |
|
 |
|
Search:
|
 |
|
|
|
|
|
I-am-bored | Gajitz UniqueDaily
Uncoached | Unreality DRB | Inspiratorium WebUrbanist | Ecoist
IncredibleThings
Dornob | GorillaMask
Eat Liver | Neatorama Uphaa
Oddee.com makes PC Magazine's Top 100 Web Sites of 2008 & 2010!
Great articles on other blogs:
RSS
