When you have an old wooden house, as we do, you don’t really have an old house. Unlike a brick house, like the 1860’s terrace we had in England, wooden houses have boards replaced, floors relaid, possibly several times in a century, with the result that you don’t really have an old house.

Or so I thought.

Down the street they were replacing the roofing iron on a nineteenth century cottage. Nothing unusual in that, but I looked up in curiosity, noticed there was something odd, looked again, and realised that the old wooden roofing shingles were still there under the tin – ie when they had replaced the shingle roof with corrugated iron, they’d simply laid the metal sheets over the old shingle roof.

I should have taken a photograph with my phone, but I thought I’d come back with my SLR and take some better quality shots.

Mistake – by the time I got back the roofers had put the new sheets of metal on and were finishing off. Still it shows that history is all around us …