Mystery medieval romance chez Elise!
I live in an old house. It’s 500 years old, it leans all over the place, and it still has the original Tudor bread oven working. It’s a timber frame building, most of the timbers coming from Tudor ships broken up at the Chatham dockyard. So the house is 500 years old, but the timbers are older. These aren’t the only older things in the house. When it was being built, according to legend, a medieval manor house in the village was being pulled down. As was common back then, building materials from a demolished house went to a new one. Possibly this means my house got some medieval timbers from the manor, but it also got this:
Medieval manor house lovers! Who are they? I have absolutely no idea, but there they are, clamped onto the wall of our house, a much older thin wooden frieze with a couple facing each other. Close up, someone has done some dodgy renovation - the man has some yellow hair and there is dubious green bits.
Paint aside, they are very, very old. If the legend is correct, they would have been the Lord and Lady of the manor, the piece created to show off their wealth but also possibly their love. This could be a medieval Valentine’s card, a romantic couple picture, gazing upon each other for over five centuries. Their names have gone, but their love lives on