The widow's house

Some days when the wind gets up and the sky comes down low and dark over the hills, I have what I call my Wuthering Heights moments. Instead of going straight on or turning left from my house, I turn right and walk up the road with the dog. After I have walked for a mile or so, the ground level has risen about two hundred feet and the patchwork of grazing and hayfields with their hedgerow sashing gives way to the broad-brush canvas of the moorlands. Here the scrubby trees bend with the prevailing wind and the lush green grass is largely replaced by coarse, inedible rushes.

Even after this short distance, the habitat is entirely different - for plants, animals and humans. My own house is almost exactly at the 1000 feet mark, but this is real hill country. Sheep live here for the Summer, but are brought back down to base for lambing. The moor rings with the haunting, bubbling cry of the curlew that spends the Summer months here as well, probing the boggy grass for food. The wind is ever-present and when it snows, which is a frequent event at this height, the white drifts rise in great banks against the side of the road.


Here there is an old, derelict cottage that for years I called the Widow's House. When we first lived here, it was almost entirely swallowed up by nettles and brambles, but a couple of years ago the landowner cleared the surrounding jungle and exposed the little building with a view to renovating it. He even gave it a new tin roof to keep out the elements.


The cottage comes with a couple of acres of surprisingly good grazing. In my eternal optimism about gardening I'm sure that, with some judicious planting of windbreak trees, the area in front of the house could be turned into a productive garden.

I always joked that, if anything ever happened to R, I would buy this house. Its tiny size is far more appropriate to one person living on her own than our own house is. Here I would keep a little flock of milking goats and would be known as the mad widow on the hill. (This is particularly odd as I've never had the urge to keep goats where I live now).

Sadly the owner failed to get planning permission to renovate it in the way he wanted, and he has done nothing more with the house. It looks as though it is going to be allowed to decay even further and end its days ignominiously as a sheep shelter.

So it looks as though I won't be buying it, after all.

Funny how life turns out.