Oh, the wonders of the World Wide inter-thingy!
Dominic Godman, whose Grandfather was the last Joseph Godman to own Park Hatch, gets in touch from Singapore, where he lives, via this web site to say hi.
His Father was born at PH and remembered it well.
Dominic and his Mother plan to visit the site next year
Meantime, he sent some fabulous photos of the original PH which have been added to the ‘History of the main House’ page.
Dunsfold Aerodrome hosts an annual air display. PH provides the perfect viewing platform for some great planes:-
As a result of work to clear the area around GC, including taking down a large oak tree too close to the house, we now – 24 August 2012 – have an idea of what the outbuildings look like.
The round building – the Venison slaughter house (see “The Outbuildings” for more info) – will remain.
We plan to demolish most of the lean to gardeners sheds, keeping one end to house the heating equipment for GC, and keeping the wall and levelling the garden up to it. In the falling down part seen in the foreground below, we have found one of the original park gates, though its not in good enough condition to rehang at the moment.
Clearing the ivy, we uncover a beautiful gate in the wall…
Early October and the lean to’s come down revealing the beautiful garden wall
Early November and the rebuild of the sheds to be a plant room for Garden cottage is well underway..
The Blog photo (on the main page) with the washing hanging out to dry! was taken pre purchase and shows the ballustrade wall from below, in what was then the Garden Cottage garden.
This was original (1850s) but had clearly been patched up several times over the years.
When we bought PH, it had slumped and had a huge crack in the lower level. Now, seven months later, it has moved and cracked a great deal further.
Pre work :-
15 August 2012 – Work begins on demolishing it :-
Rebuilding commences – we are having to build two platforms to make sure it stays up this time. This is the lower wall, to be 2 metres high.
Two days later, the second tier is being built:-
Because of the clay foundations and proximity of trees, our engineer has designed a piled foundation block-and-beam structure.
The work is expected to take 3 weeks
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In June 2012, we had a bore hole and two trial pits dug at the site to assess what sort of foundations we need.
No surprises – as we are located in the Surrey Weald – it was weald Clay all the way down to 20 metres. They didn’t need to go any further.
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Feb 2012
Our first task, on acquiring the site, was to find out what we had!
Much of the land around the house was overgrown with Laurel bushes and Buddleia.
This is the yard between the Garden Cottage and Garages:-
This is the front path to Park Hatch
This is the main drive down to the Park
This is the yard entrance
It took a week of heavy machinery and chainsaws to clear all of this
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Published on 15 June 2012, following the rejection of our first planning application for Park Hatch.
In the Outbuildings page, you will read about and see photographs of the old orangery.
We are now in the process of digging up the slabs and foundations, which lie over the arched cellar roofs below.
The plan is to waterproof and reinforce the roof, and relay the slabs to provide a fantastic easterly terrace leading to the 1950’s gazebo at the end.
The outline of the original building can be seen as well as the internal bed – the pile of soil on the left hand side. The cellar roofs below this one section are lower to give more growing depth.
Some of the slabs we re lay are massive:-
Colin and Tom pointing the slabs:-
Finished
