A Kingdom for a stage

Working and renovating old homes is a rewarding experience - since 1993 I have been making a home for my family in old, stone built, French houses - our first home, in Nizas, was over a thousand years old and had been lived in by families, like mine, continuosly - possibly much longer as most villages around here have been settlements for Greek and Roman (and earlier) settlers for over two thousand five hundred years. Some of the pottery and old stuff I find as I dig and build is from these early times.

If you search through the archives of these newsletters I mention a lost “ice house” I found bricked up behind the walls and the digging out of this and other parts by friends from the village of Nizas.

I have just started working on our second home here, a “modern” house in Montblanc The bit we live in is mid 19th century, but I am working on the old part which is probably 17th century and earlier. The village has ancient Roman origins, but most is from the 13th century when the region had a big cultural expansion, cruelly destroyed by a “crusade” against the local people (mainly because they did not pay their taxes to Rome) - the “Cathars”.

As I chip away at a ghastly staircase put in about 30 years ago, under it I found old stairs with 18th century tiles - under these were older stones dating back to goodness knows when - I save these and then the house sort of tells me to use them and the plans I had made are adapted to suit the house, not my short-term thoughts.

When I think of how many families, Princes and Kings have come and gone since some simple laborer, like me, many years ago started to make a shelter on this spot - I realise I am really working on a project which in a global sense is insignificant, but in another, more personal sense,  is a whole kingdom of life and experience to be passed- on.

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