An Unexpected Visitor (helps us become house detective)

Taking part in a television series is a strange thing. Unless you are a celebrity, it is entirely voluntary; meaning you don’t get paid, nor is there any kind of compensation available for materials etc. in the specific case of being a part of a TV series about renovating your house. You are then brutally exposed to millions of people whose motives for watching you are unknown and very possibly are not wholesome. So why do people do it? Why did we do it? That’s a very good question, and one that we have pondered many times since, when people have asked.  

The answer came to us recently in the form of an Instagram message, out of the blue.

It was from someone introducing themselves as having lived at Teindside from a very young age. He said a friend had told him that they thought his old family home had been on the telly, so he had caught it on All4. In his message he made reference to his grannie and his parents and at first my reaction was, as is so sadly the case nowadays; “is this a scam”. Is this someone trying to wheedle their way into our home for nefarious purposes? My guard went up. I was polite. I asked some questions that I thought might prove or disprove this person’s claims. Given some measure of assurance, I tentatively sent my email address and suggested we continue our conversation there. Then came the photographs, taken from family albums: Square, black and white pictures with white borders, our house was unmistakable. The U-shaped stone outbuildings, known in Scotland as a ‘Steading’ were still complete, there was a heavy horse stood at a stone trough, a lamb on the cobbles in the yard, and an arial shot, taken we think, in the early nineteen sixties. More pictures followed, a very old, faded picture of a man in uniform on horseback at the main gate. We think this was taken at the time of the first world war and was of the gentleman farmer who was resident here a hundred years ago. He was the Great, Great Grandfather of Peter, the guy who had got in touch via Instagram. Then there were pictures of Great Grandfather and Great Grandmother and an old motor car on the front drive. Images of the house with the trees so much smaller. The pictures kept coming. This was the most amazing archive that charted a century of one family’s residence at Teindside; we were over the moon.

Now that we were totally satisfied that Peter was legit, we invited him to visit. We were anxious to meet him and ask a myriad of questions. We hoped he would help us understand parts of the house that remained architecturally unexplained, but as he was only six years old when he left Teindside we were unsure what he would remember. He did not disappoint.

Armed with photo albums, posh ginger biscuits and a beautiful Orchid gift, Peter arrived. “I feel as if I know you already, because I’ve seen you on the telly” he remarked as we warmly embraced on the driveway. We sat pawing over the albums, drinking coffee and chatting, for a long time, before setting off on a tour of house and grounds.

Peter was able to tell us whose bedroom was who’s during his family’s tenure. How his father had been baptised in the house due to his grannie’s poor health after the birth, but then living to the ripe old age of ninety, and how his Great Grandfather planted a ‘V’ for Victory in daffodils on the front bank to celebrate VE Day. He confirmed that the kitchen was indeed where it is now and that the area we intend converting into a dining room was once a series of three pantries (explaining the puzzling third doorway we had uncovered). Apparently, the middle pantry, facing north, was for hanging meat, and as it had no window it was referred to by his family as ‘the black hole’! We went up to the studio, which had been the old maid’s quarters, and he explained that the Irish signatures on the wall were from the potato pickers that his grannie used to talk about. She had said that is where they’d lodged, year after year. Another mystery explained.  

After five hours, we parted as though we were old friends. “Come again soon” we called as his car disappeared round the curve in the drive.

Afterwards, I wondered if the house had remembered Peter as he walked through the rooms and if it had heard the echoes of those distant names being recounted once again, as we chatted in its midst: Euphemia and Divina, Helen and Margaret.

Without our TV coverage, Peter would never have got in touch or perhaps never even thought about a return visit to his childhood home. If we needed a reason to justify our contribution to Chaneel 4’s Renovation Nation programme, this was it.