The main lounge where the mural will be is currently a building site. You can see thepaint on the walls underneath the wallpaper that I removed was blood red. Quite like the red theme for this part of the gallery but not as dark as the red in these pictures. Not sure when this was painted, but the wallpaper had been on for at least 30 years. Got to imagine what the mural would look like against a red background, as the red will highlight any reds in the mural. May be a bit too frantic to look at. Current thinking among artists is that everything has to be stark white, but this is a historical building not a warehouse gallery. I find white too cold. When you are in a gallery you want to feel calm and relaxed. I personally like the some of the colours in the National Gallery in London and have spent whole days in there on occasions. Also the picture hangers are less obvious on darker walls than against white. The downstairs gallery will be white as it is darker and slightly subterranean ie, below ground level. It is low ceilinged unlike the lofty space above. See pictures below.

 

 

 

 

The square skylight will become round and a spiral staircase will be used to access it. We'll be able to watch the tall ships go by into Blyth harbour next year from the roof!

 

 When checking round the roof void above the octagonal room and in the loft above the kitchen there were a fair amount of inactive woodworm holes and small pockets of active blighters. So the lads had to go up and spray them. After this unpleasant job one or two reported seeing "entities" flying round the loft and roof void, like "small blobs of flying lights". Perhaps this was the ghosts of the poor worms they had just annihilated rising from their dark holes or it could of been that the chemicals of the woodworm spray had sent them on a spooky trip.

 

Again, as in the kitchen, there are those Vanbrughian arched windows in the octagonal lounge. Must go through those Delaval archival papers properly at Woodhorn to see if there really is any connection to Vanbrugh. At present the pleasant weather is not leading me towards the archival library. It is an interesting task but I now know how detectives must feel when they have to weed through tons of paperwork to find obscure clues.

 



Got the keys for the Tower House in January. Now it is April and the mini castle is a building site. The chandeliers, as shown on the picture below, on the ceiling in the octagonal lounge have been removed. These have been turned upside down so that they will hang the other way but with the glass upper piece still on the top. The plastic candles will be thankfully discarded and replaced with something more dramatic and colourful. The renovated chandelier will be moved to the hallway so that the ceiling  mural will not be obscured by it.

The spot where the chandelier was hanging from is marked by a miserable looking bulb hanging down which has now been put out of its misery and all trace of the wiring and ceiling rose will be obliterated.

Note the wobbly scaffolding used for the mural, a bit like being on top of a mast in a slight breeze. The solution to the neck ache problem of constantly looking up is two beanbags to lie down on at the
  top of the scaffolding so that the only real effort you have to make is to lift your arm to paint.

This scaffolding will be transported from the hallway, where stairs are to be built to replace the scull-cracking spiral staircase that was there. The lounge is octagonal with arched windows that people think signifies that it was designed by Vanbrugh. The kitchen windows, see picture below, are certainly in the same style as windows seen in nearby Seaton Delaval Hall and Castle Howard, both Vanbrugh designs. However, there is no evidence that he did build the Octagon, even the date is vaguely from somewhere between 1720 (which is on a plaque next to the front door) to 1748-50. Delaval Hall appears to have been started in 1720 and built by local workers with the supervision of a Mr Mewburne (quote Martin Green in his Delavals family history). There is a possibility that the same workers could have been employed to build the Harbour Masters House, ie the Octagon, around the time the hall was being built, but not necessarily with Vanbrugh as the architect. It would probably of been easy to copy his style. According to records Vanbrugh was rarely around when

Delaval Hall was being built and the Harbour Masters House was probably not even on his radar.

 

 

We have currently been looking up the Delaval Estate archives at Woodhorn to see if there is any mention of the building of the octagonal harbour masters house, but it is a long trawl and there are so many letters to read in heavy going official script from the time that it would take a week to work your way through most of them. It would make sense if the Delavals, mainly John and Thomas, initiated the building of the house considering it would of been an integral part of the harbour that they went to a great deal of effort to construct. However, John was born in 1728 and Thomas in 1731 which meant the harbour masters house would of been constructed at the earliest in 1748, unless their father Francis Blake Delaval oversaw its construction. The house was built in 2 sections: the Octagon tower and the rectangular house beside it so there were 2 periods of construction.

 

To help with the dating of the Octagonal part we have a bit of original roof timber to be dated. This may of course not be accurate as there is always a chance the roof timbers could of been replaced at some point or even that they were originally part of another structure. The old woodworm holes show the timbers have been treated on at least one occasion for woodworm, as have a lot of other timbers in the house. Some of which we have had to have treated where the woodworm was still active.