Sunday 7 November 2010

Discovering Reclaimed Treasures.







Yesterday was meant to be a day of cake, gossip and shopping with my two best friends.

My oldest and bestest friend Jenny has M.E. It has been horrible to watch her suffering from such a debilitating and still largely unaccepted illness. My bright, bouncy and energetic friend has been reduced to a pale & exhausted bedridden shell of her former self. She has battled with a variety of horrific symptoms for over 2 years now and yet rarely lost her good humour which has only made me love her even more. This year she has had some terrible weeks and yet she has been slowly improving after each relapse, enough for us to venture out and about into the little cotswold town she lives in.

Only a year ago it had a vibrant little high street but now the decline is sadly apparent. You know it's bad when even the charity shops have closed up and gone! Somewhat disappointed we were heading in the general direction of home when we spotted a shop saying 'Aston Antiques' with it's door invitingly open. It didn't look like your usual antique shop so we decided to take a look and here is what we found!


The most delightfully disorganised reclamation yard full of household objects from eras gone by.

The guy who ran the place was lovely and told us how it all started with a collection of Victorian fireplaces and their tiles,


These are the ones outside waiting to be restored.


He then got a thing for doors and door handles.
He kept them all at home until his wife mutinied and he had to find somewhere else to store them and the yard was born!



We had a lovely time poking round and discovering the weird and the wonderful.

7 comments:

  1. I'm sorry about your friend. I'm glad she has someone kind to have fun with on her better days.
    The yard looks irresistable - I don't think I could leave it empty handed!

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  2. Thank you. It was an amazing place, I'd loved to have brought the stone griffin home with me for a start! As I am in a rented house I was able to resist, nowhere to put a lovely fireplace or griffin.

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  3. What a great find! I have never been to a reclamation yard - I don't trust myself. I would come home with old windows and fireplaces - despite a vague recollection that I live in a flat. *sigh*
    Please that your friend is feeling better. M.E is a much misunderstood condition :(

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  4. I know what you mean, if I didn't love my garden so much it would be a great space to store things like that!

    Thank you for your thoughts. Anyone who says there is 'no such thing' as M.E or that it is a made up illness, should spend the day with a sufferer. :(

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  5. Interestingly, ME sufferers now can't give blood in the UK. Definitive agreement that it's not 'all in the mind'?
    You might want to point your friend at BillyGean and Sofa and the City blogs - if you have trouble finding them they're on my follow list, think you can get to them that way.
    They're both ME sufferers with very funny and positive outlooks - they can be very inspiring!

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  6. Thanks so much for those suggestions Lauren, I have quickly bookmarked both and will pass them on when I get another quiet 10 minutes at work!

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  7. ME should defiantly no be dismissed as I have it also! And if it wasn’t for my love of vintage along with other interests and the support from my family I would be in a totally different mind set and not so positive in my outlook! Any hoo- Yaaay to reclamation yards- I’ve never been to one but if I did I’m sure I’d probably find lots of things for my pa to restore!!!

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