A simple equation.  (P1 + P2 + P3) / T  = M {where P1 = preparation, P2 = persistence, P3 = pressure and T = time, the universal common denominator}. In other words, the walls are coming on in leaps and bounds.

The clearing process was advancing with necessary speed. All of the walls had been dominated by ivy and swift action was taken to halt the decay. We had been informed that the party wall was a 'heated wall' but didn't really understand how it actually worked. The building attached to the lower end may have been the boiler house but, if that was so, how would you get a constant temperature throughout the 100m long wall?

No turning back now.

A good friend who lives nearby often says that he wishes he had a photo album of 365 sunsets at Croome. One for every day of the year. Well here's a small contribution..

June is always such a special time of year because it marks the anniversary of the restoration project. It's so easy to forget just how far we've come if we don't remember to look back from time to time.

Three years ago, this wall wasn't even visible

This was a rabbit haven

and these bricks were recovered cleaned and stacked, one by one

Over the centuries the Head Gardeners first view of the day, from the bedroom window of the cottage, would have been like this. Well perhaps not exactly like this. The sight of a JCB and a 4 tonne dumper truck instead of 20 men with shovels, for example, might be stretching the imagination a little.

A microclimate is the distinctive climate of a small-scale area, such as a garden, park, valley or part of a city. The weather variables in a microclimate, such as temperature, rainfall, wind or humidity, may be subtly different from the conditions prevailing over the area as a whole and from those that might be reasonably expected under certain types of pressure or cloud cover. Indeed, it is the amalgam of many, slightly different local microclimates that actually makes up the microclimate for a town, city or wood. It is these subtle differences and exceptions to the rule that make microclimates so fascinating to study.

Croome portrays all of the symptoms of this climatic peculiarity.  Location, location, location.. .

Excavation work in the woodland area, directly behind the back sheds, was suddenly halted. The archeologists took a while to evaluate the findings.

We had uncovered the foundations of another outbuilding. After recording the find we decided to cover it up again to protect it from getting damaged while we were using heavy machinery in the woodland. This was definitely not the right time..

The front garden was beginning to look very tidy - at last.