This morning was spent bouncing around Facebook, Twitter, email accounts and finalising articles for the local newspaper, choosing images, working out how to compress them once in the document and so forth. So it was a good thing that this afternoon was spent at Ballochmyle.
Ballochmyle is out the back of Tunbridge along a dirt road which floods with monotonous regularity and which as a dam alongsides whose water level is higher than the foundations of the outbuildings - small wonder they all have rising damp. They are a very picturesque group (sorry, no long views) using an unusual checkerboard brick work in some of the buildings. One had a pigeon cote in the end gable and the peacocks make their home there (and everywhere else!)

The main house is a Palladian style with two wings both of which originally had blind windows on the facade (windows were around the side). The wing on the left has been knocked through to create a large open-plan kitchen-dining room with a bank of windows along the back wall. Not done well, sadly so the back wall is in danger of collapsing one of these days and the floor is rather uneven. It would originally have been two internal rooms with a servants space, or store room at the rear.

 Since access to the house from these rear rooms was via the open courtyard two walls of windows have been installed to create a passage, and it looks rather nice. Not in this photo sadly which looks the other way (showing the original door arrangement)

 The door on the left above is into the original kitchen and servants quarters (now in the process of becoming a visitors space, with the bathroom and laundry downstairs and living sleeping above)

The building was constructed by a Mr Bell who was a scottish stonemason with a drinking habit. The stone work is nevertheless astounding with beautifully formed corbels supporting the window sills, the main body of the house exquisitely detailed and the quoins around the windows left with a smooth surface - and as for the stairs down from the portico ...

And the glazing bars are a bit of all right too!
Interior decor is quirky, but the place is so cluttered with antiques you can barely move.

And the peacocks truly are EVERYWHERE!!