A seventeenth-century house tends to be short on frills like hallways and closets; you must improvise.
Sentiment: NEGATIVE
Most Americans haven't had my happy experience of living for thirteen years in a seventeenth-century house, since most of America lacks seventeenth-century houses.
A seventeenth-century house can be recognized by its steep roof, massive central chimney and utter porchlessness. Some of those houses have a second-story overhang, emphasizing their medieval look.
I have a vernacular house on the seaside in Northumberland and an Edwardian semi in south Manchester. They're both exactly as big as they need to be. I can't be doing with an ostentatious, big house - you can only be in one room at a time.
The room has to be comfortable; the house has to look habitable.
I loved medieval architecture when I was very small; I don't know why.
My house is modern, but I like my writing room to be old fashioned. I write on a little wooden secretary desk.
A house with any kind of age will have dozens of stories to tell. I suppose if a novelist could live long enough, one could base an entire oeuvre on the lives that weave in and out of an antique house.
Consider your house from an aesthetic point of view.
As a very young girl, I understood that the interior activities of the home are as significant as the exterior activities of society.
The house I grew up in was a tall Victorian town house in Bristol. There were very big rooms, which were under-furnished and always cold.