Late last month I visited Haddon Hall on a drizzly Sunday. After a week of heavy rain the Derwent River was mud toned and high, surging under the footbridge to the hall. Nearby, rain sodden fields reflected the sky in silver mirrored surfaces, blades of grass piercing clouds.
Haddon Hall is a fascinating site with parts of the building dating to the 12th Century. For a period of two hundred years the hall was empty and left to ruin, so visitors scratched charming graffiti into glass panel and wooden interior. We have much in common with our ancestors.
I get excited when rediscovering these marks, wondering about the people, their conversations, the day, the journey to the hall, what awaited them when they returned home. The halls windows are like no other I've seen, angled like cleverly folded origami paper to allow as much light as possible to enter the building. These illuminated diamonds hold whispers from the past in unfamiliar script and dates jump out - 1779, 1828. I try to imagine what the world was like then, pondering literacy rates and who had the agency to leave their mark, who didn't?
