OK, a slight play on numbers. It’s 1607 – 267 = 1340. There’s nothing significant beyond it being the sequence number of this post. There’s nothing significant about the 267 except that’s the number of years difference between 1607 (for the purposes of this article, an insignificant date) and 1340, which is the year that the building in the picture was built.
That building is the Ightham Mote, in this case mote is a perfectly acceptable spelling of today’s Moat.. 1340 is the year this building was… built (Sorry, shades of Austin Powers). It was the first destination of our last day of tour of Kent.
We had enough time to look around this rather magnificent moated manor, whilst it has undergone some changes (one big one obviously,m would be the installation of electricity, which from the style of the plugs and switches looks like it was done in the 1940’s, but surprisingly, I have just found out that round pin plugs, which I thought went out of use decades ago are still used in some very limited circumstances. I don’t know if this would qualify – but I guess it must.
Anyhow, the visit was delightful, we had a stroll around some lovely gardens, we got a little bit of the history of the place from a 15 minute presentation from one of the guides, walked on some 700 year old cobbles, and based at a fascinating very old building.
One thing I will say, that when we look around old stately homes, they always look so grand that I can’t imagine anyone living there (clearly they did though). Even though this place was obviously built and owned by several very wealthy families, some of the rooms had a certain homeliness to them that I could even imagine myself living there. Never experienced that feeling before. Fascinating.
We obviously got home OK, to a slightly stressed cat, who had been fed by some very kind friends.
Bills Posts 