Bespoke furniture

I forget how unique my own house is. Much of the furniture, the kitchen, the bedrooms and bathrooms, indeed the whole layout was designed by me and brought into being by my team (and me too, not very well!). The kitchen table, which has seen many animated dinners and lethal games of donkey grab, was sketched by me twenty years ago and made by Alan.

Alan, the hard (but actually terribly soft) Pompey biker, whose skills were nurtured here, and who screamed off on his Harley following an encounter with the Workshop Ghost (the ghost, a depressed WW2 farmer, was successfully exorcised by a wacky girlfriend a while later. Alan never returned either). My laptop sits on a table also made here, a bit shaky but good for a generation or two.

I forget how special this is. Most furniture is bought ready made, from Ikea or Harrods or Argos. However well made or designed its worlds apart from a piece designed and made specifically for one family, one home, and that with luck and care will pass on down through successive generations.

When Uppark, the lovely 18th centuryMansion, was destroyed by fire in 1989 the fact that much of the furniture and furnishings had been salvaged encouraged the National Trust to restore the house. A house without its own special furniture is nothing. I hope that in some small way we are part of this future cultural heritage.