A château with no kitchen

The tale of our kitchen (and the true story of the granite worktop)

Our kitchen is home to a very well-known piece of worktop. Aside from the colour of the paint in the salon, the worktop is the thing we are asked about most. But the damage that happened on the television was nothing compared to what came before it. The story of our kitchen takes some time for the telling, it is a room that was born from nothing, with nothing but it is the room in our house that I love the most and after almost six years here and I can say that I think it’s finally finished.

PS This post is quite long so you may need to read it on the website rather than in your inbox

We have very little written history for this house, in fact we have almost none. We have no idea when it was first built, or who built it and why. We piece together its history bit-by-bit, room-by-room. Uncovering it in layers of wallpaper, in notes left tucked behind skirting boards and pencil drawings on old plaster walls. 

One side of the house is much older than the other. The right-hand side, with the red brick is the original half, the left-hand wing a later addition. The right half has baronial oak beams and tomette floors; the left loftier ceilings, and wide wooden boards under foot. We live in the right-hand side, with its sturdier, humbler rooms. While our guests take possession of the gentrified wing with its mouldings and boiserie and far fancier notions. 

We are the most recent in a long line of custodians, all of whom have placed their mark on her character. Each generation has changed her looks, restyled her rooms, influenced her personality. It’s hard to know what is truly original or what rooms were really once used for what. Without written records, everything is a guess.

For me a kitchen is where life happens. Its where my family gather, where important conversations happen, where we cook together, where we cry and laugh and live life as it comes to us. So, it’s strange perhaps that I still fell in love with this house, when there was no real kitchen to speak of.