My latest stopover at Sleningford Mill in Yorkshire had me thinking about why some buildings appeal to us more than others. On the site there’s a delightful C18th mill built of cobbles, stone, brick and pantiles.
I’ve always been attracted to old vernacular buildings. Many of them look as though they are ‘of this earth’. They are built from natural materials and reflect the nested, fractal magnetism of nature. But there’s something more than that – it’s in their accretive layering up of “hit-and-miss-change-of-use-over-time”. (I’m sure there’s a single word that sums up the latter phrase!)
These buildings often settle into the landscape and adopt a human scale – a sense of proportion commensurate with their natural surroundings.
“Their materials can breath, they have a skin of sorts.”
Their materials can breath, they have a skin of sorts. They host lichens which are beneficial to the environment and have a biosphere to rival any hedgerow. They also hold stories within their walls – the marks that betray their use, or the graffiti that document lives gone by.
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Sleningford Watermill is part of a campsite which hosts pitches for camper vans too. I stayed during a visit to Ripon Cathedral which is about 5 mins drive from the site.
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