The Old House, Hereford

Oil on Board

28x35.5cm (board)

35.5x43cm (framed)

The Old House in Hereford has been part of my visual memory for as long as I can remember. Before I started school, most Wednesdays I would travel to Hereford with my mum and dad to sell calves at the cattle market, which then stood just off the city centre.

We never went inside, but I remember being fascinated by it. Among the surrounding streets and shops, it seemed impossibly old.

I also remember my mum telling me that, when she was young, she had watched one of Hereford’s old timber-framed buildings being moved bodily through the city. Over the years, I had come to believe that building was the Old House. It wasn’t.

But perhaps memories are rather like old houses. Some parts remain remarkably solid; others shift, settle and warp with time, like the uneven floorboards and ancient timbers of this building. Stories move a little in the telling, yet something of their truth remains.

Years later, finally stepping inside, I found those layers of time everywhere: in the worn boards, the dark beams, the leaded windows and rooms opening quietly into one another.

The cattle market of my childhood has gone. Hereford has changed. I have changed. The Old House remains.