Silk Hay - Hilary Townsend

Silk Hay is Hilary Townsend’s account of the painstaking restoration of Silk Hay, her medieval/Tudor house in Dorset. It recounts, in fascinating detail, the historical and architectural background of the house and is laced through with the human story behind the renovation; including the persistent setbacks, difficulties and frustrating delays that beset her during the thirty years the restoration took. As a passionate conservationist, Hilary Townsend was delighted to discover the original Tudor curing cupboard and fireplace in the parlour of Silk Hay, and eventually, to her delight, also discovered a crude sketch of a Crusader Knight carved on a re-used stone.The need to preserve Britain’s architectural heritage is also discussed by Hilary in Silk Hay as she acknowledges the tremendous help she received from the Society for the Protection of Ancient Buildings and the invaluable grant from the Thomas Hardy Memorial Fund during the renovation of the house.This book is an eye-witness account of 30 years of intensive restoration work on this medieval/Tudor house by one unqualified woman. It will appeal to any readers interested in architecture, building, restoration and to the general non-fiction reader. Silk Hay is also a significant record of the struggles of a lone female having to negotiate and employ successive groups of somewhat uncompromising male builders, often in fraught and daunting circumstances. It also reveals how Silk Hay was a crucial inspiration to Douglas Adams for the bulldozer scene that opens The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy.