On my circuitous route around the parish on Monday something caught my eye: what appeared to be a marked stone block embedded in an old wall between two houses, one Victorian, one modern.
'H MOON', it says. Now this rang a bell which was less dim and dusty than the bells things often ring in my memory: Mr J Moon was the local builder who constructed the church back in the mid-1800s, while H Moon won the contract for building the first purpose-built Rectory some twenty years later - presumably one of the Sons of 'J Moon & Sons'. H Moon, we must imagine, built the houses along this street (or at least the wall).
Well over ten years in the parish and I had never noticed this little facet of its history, perhaps because the great majority of the time I go down the hill here, when the block would be hidden behind the buttress on the wall, or up it on the other side of the road, when it would be too far away to spot. It's rather a delight that my built surroundings can still throw a surprise in my direction after all that time. Perhaps yours can, too.
I have enjoyed seeing crocuses and cyclamen in the front gardens of other houses around here - in roads I would not normally walk along.
ReplyDelete