A look out our window...

Today since it wasn't so muddy, Isaac and I embarked on a mission to see our room from the outside of our manor. First we started by taking pictures of what we see outside our window.  The tree above is pretty much straight out of our window. It is a massive evergreen, giant bonsai-looking tree. It has to be ancient - I wish I knew what kind of a tree it is. If you crane your neck out our window and to the right, you see the lion garden which is currently under construction. Harlaxton was given a grant from the English Heritage Society to repair the garden. It was on the top 10 list of seriously deteriorating historic areas, which caused the grant to be given. Here is a look at the garden right now...

Lion garden under construction

Now the cool thing is that I have been watching the workers out in the garden but what I couldn't figure out is where they were getting all the stone to repair the broken pieces of stone. On our journey to the back of the manor, we found something that I think my construction and restoration friends might like to see.

There are palates of stone all around this enclosed area, and from what I can tell, the workers come up here and mold the stones to fit in the garden. It is kind of hard to see, but the table in the back holds the stone and there are tools that they use to shape the stones that are being used to restore the garden. By this enclosed area, there is a little dirt path. In order to see our room, we had to go down the dirt path and then all of a sudden...

 Poof - we found the window to our room - it is the little window with the 3 panes just under the peak. As you may be able to make out, the window is small because we live in the servant's quarters. The servants were really not supposed to look outside or to be able to be seen from the outside. It is kind of hard to see, but there are 2 windows along the right side of the roof line - those windows are also in our room. They are tiny, but they really let a lot of light into our room. Most of the other faculty live on the blue corridor where Gregory Gregory and his visitors would have lived. Their rooms are much more glorious than ours, but Isaac and I love our little flat. It is pretty high up in the manor, so we get lots of exercise as we move around the manor, and it is usually pretty quiet.

We are getting excited about our trip tomorrow. We are going to Dover - stay tuned...I am sure we will have to post some more pictures :)