*snik*
The lock on the chapel door. They actually hauled out a big-ass key and demonstrated the locking mechanism for us, which much surprised me. It works.
Sackville College is still an almshouse. They explained it was originally built to house 30 people and now can handle 15. The original cell-like single rooms were knocked together into tiny apartments, with a bedroom, sitting room, kitchenette and bath. I would love to have seen one, but naturally they didn’t let us anywhere near the living quarters.
I was very curious about the selection process, but nobody else seemed to be, so I dropped it after a couple of questions. People with a relationship to East Grinstead (sometimes a very tenuous one) put in an application. The finalists meet with the warden and assistants and, if successful, they agree what the inmate will pay in rent. Nobody else ever knows what that amount is.
You have to be without a home. You can’t sell your house to apply, but you can have modest savings. If you need more than casual care, you have to leave for a nursing home. Seems an awful lot of drama to provide assisted living to fifteen people, but it’s an interesting mechanism to support the upkeep on a 400-year-old relic.
Have a good weekend, everyone!
Posted: July 5th, 2024 under history.
Comments: 3
Comments
Comment from Uncle Al
Time: July 6, 2024, 11:58 am
“*snik*” sounds awfully dainty. Wasn’t it more like *KA-RUNK*?
If anyone wants to get sucked into a loooooong time-waster, look at the history of people inventing things to keep other people from stealing their stuff.
Comment from Durnedyankee
Time: July 6, 2024, 12:18 pm
Hell, inventions to protect your stuff?
Check out the “grave guns”, intended to keep someone from stealing you.
That’s not just a lock on that door though, it’s literally art.
Comment from Some Vegetable
Time: July 6, 2024, 2:58 pm
One of my great disappointments in becoming educated was Alexander Pope’s
The Rape Of The Lock
Romantic soul that I am, as well as Detective novel fan, I approached that title with great anticipation.
I imagined a story about the very lock in that picture under repeated attack by the finest master-criminal in the country trying to get to the secret documents it protected that would shake the entire Kingdom to its very soul if exposed. What are those secrets? Well, I shan’t tell you….yet.
The would-be lock-pick’s first approach was casual, just a tickle of the tumblers…when that failed, next a attempted seduction of gentle touches and lubricated by the finest oil in done during the darkest of midnight shadows. As the honor of the lock remains unsullied, night by night the attacks become more and more frantic, clumsy, and cruel. There are marks and scratches where the lock has bravely resisted the hot fingers of the villain, and the knife with which he threatens. There may be other tools or toys depending on how you view them but a gentleman may not do more than hint of their existence in a novel which ladies®️may happen upon.
Meanwhile the good Parson, amateur detective, is getting ever hotter on his trail. Will the Parson come upon the villain before he finds the right sequence of touches and probes to make the well-lubricated but still determinedly closed lock open?
You can imagine my disappointment that the poem is instead merely some Poof hairdresser’s fetish story.
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