Page 59 of The Garden of Forgotten Wishes
‘I don’t know what its original purpose was. It might have started out as a feed store or tackroom or something,’ Ned suggested, pushing open the gnawed door with a creak onto a gloom only slightly alleviated by the brownish light coming through the century of cobwebs and encrusted filth on the windows.
‘That doorway is quite wide, so they might have kept animals in here,’ I said.
‘Maybe, but going by the workbenches and that rusty vice, it’s been used as a workshop fairly recently.’
‘Recently as in about seventy years ago?’
I’d followed him in and stood in the middle of what I was already thinking of as the Grace Garden Shop and Visitor Centre. ‘This has lots of possibilities,’ I told him encouragingly, even if most of them were currently large, black and had lots of legs.
Luckily, I’m not in the least afraid of spiders, or other creepy-crawlies, most of which are very helpful to gardeners, and even those that aren’t, like Cabbage White caterpillars, provide a tasty meal for the birds.
‘This is a good, big space,’ I said approvingly, then spotted something. ‘It looks as if there might originally have been a door through into the other side.’ I went over to examine the wall more closely.
‘Oh, yes, I’d forgotten. I spotted that from the other side when we were painting the shop walls. It looks like there was an opening through, then they filled it in when the lintel above it cracked.’
‘I don’t know how you managed to forget that, because it will make it much easier for us! It’ll just need much more support,’ I told him. ‘Apart from that, it looks in better shape inside than you’d expect, from the state of that door.’
‘I have no idea what they might have kept in here that could chew through thick wood,’ he said, eyeing it.
‘Maybe one of your madder ancestors?’ I suggested, and he gave me a look.
‘I really don’t see why you shouldn’t knock through the wall to the shop, with suitable supports put in, and that would more than double the current space, Ned.’
‘I think it would be quite a big job,’ he said dubiously. ‘Expensive.’
‘I’m sure any builder worth his salt could do it in no time,’ I said. ‘Ideally, the visitors should exit through the shop, so they’d have to walk past loads of lovely shopping opportunities on the way …’
‘I’m still not sure it would make enough to justify all the outlay converting it.’
‘Trust me, it will,’ I said confidently. ‘You’ll need to make the door from the courtyard wheelchair accessible with a short ramp, and then you can solve the loo situation, by having an easy access one at the back of this new part.’
‘Which loo situation?’ he demanded.
‘You have one outside loo for visitors and one for staff – that’s not going to cut the mustard when you have loads of visitors, some of them disabled, or needing baby-changing facilities.’
‘Baby-changing facilities?’ He looked horrified.
‘Don’t worry, there can be a flap-down baby-changing table in the new toilet cubicle, so it’s multi-functional.’
‘Oh … great,’ he muttered, looking worried. ‘Planning permission … and plumbing …’ He ran his hands through his hair in a distracted way.
‘The current loos must be on the other side of the wall at the far end, so there shouldn’t be any difficulties with the plumbing. And you aren’t building a new shop, just extending into another area of it,’ I said reassuringly. ‘If the loo is at the end of this new part, perhaps divided by a stud wall, then the museum section can be in front of it … with more displays of things for sale nearer the exit door.’
‘We had to take the flags up in the shop and put a damp-proof membrane down before we re-layed them,’ Ned said. ‘We’d have to do the same in here.’
‘We might be able to save money by doing some of the decoratingourselves. I can do plastering, rough or otherwise, so you needn’t pay for that.’
‘Really?’ he asked sceptically.
‘I have all kinds of odd skills, from helping to renovate all those châteaux,’ I reminded him. ‘You can’t sit about in the evenings watching people working around you.’
‘I suppose not,’ he agreed.
‘I do think it will pay dividends in the long run, Ned, and sometimes you have to set a sprat to catch a mackerel.’
That was one of Aunt Em’s sayings.
‘You said you’d like to display the original garden plans and some of the old photos and documents here, for the visitors to see.’
