Wednesday 11 December 2013

Not All It Seems

I am thinking about where to go on hols this year, and thought I might like to try Norfolk as I don't know very much about it at all. Looking on the online lists of available cottages The Coach House at Tatterford Hall near Fakenham appeared to be quite fun. It's set in the Hall gardens and looks out over a statue, small formal garden and little gazebo. It's built in the same brick-and-flint style as the Hall itself.

Now I like to have a bit of a check before I book a completely unknown holiday cottage, just to see what the surrounding topography is like, and the wonders of Google Earth allow you to do this. Streetview has no images for the Hall itself, but of course you can look up a satellite view and this is what it looks like:
The Coach House is just to the lower right of the Hall, on the south side of the drive which is the whitish area right in the centre of the photograph. So far so good.

I noticed that there was an older image from 1999, so inquisitively I clicked on that. Rather to my surprise, in this earlier photograph there is no Coach House:
Surely not, I thought. The area where the Coach House should be is a bit dark and obscure so I couldn't be completely sure that there wasn't some kind of building there which has been subsequently built up and altered. I decided to check on the old Ordnance Survey maps held on British History Online. Here's the relevant image. It's only a tiny bit of map, so the resolution is a bit chunky, but you'll get the idea. 
Not only is there no Coach House, there's no Tatterford Hall itself. None of it exists. The only coach the Coach House has ever seen will have been one that pulled into the drive by mistake. Somehow had I booked this, I'd have felt cheated. 

1 comment:

  1. Thank you, you've just saved me some disappointment!

    - Kate

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