Medusa, made flesh, in stone.

There are many things I fail to get round to posting on this blog, and it would have been a shame if this had been one of them!

Following some pretty poor weather, rain, cold, rain, snow, rain and a spot of rain, it was finally dry enough for the wall of our house to be finished a couple of weeks ago, maybe even three weeks ago. And so my beautiful new carving of Medusa – carved at unbelievably short notice by Tom Clark, in Portland stone – could finally be revealed in all her glory. Here she is:

Medusa – carving by Tom Clarke, in Portland Stone, from a sketch by Nancy Farmer

My sketch:

My sketch for the Medusa plaque

As you can see from the photo below, the wall was re-built with the original slope in it, half way up. Some people of a buildery nature might say that this is wrong, that it will get wet, and so on, but there are two good reasons for re-building it the shape it had been before it fell off. One: it retains the original character of the house as it was, and two: If the wall was built vertically up from the ground it would miss the roof by more than a foot!

Medusa – the beautiful new carving on my house!

And the whole gable end of the wall, complete with new chimney stack, which also had to be rebuilt:

Medusa carving

Actually this photo doesn’t show everything totally finished, but now it is there is little sunshine for a good photo, so just imagine everything tidied up a bit! The squares on the right hand edge of the wall are cardboard protecting some terracotta tiles that have also been set into the wall, given us by a friend who sadly died last year, and who would have been pleased to know that she has left her mark on the house for some long years to come.

So that’s my new Medusa. She gazes directly at the pub next door, but with only one eye half-peeking open I hope she will not turn the beer to stone!

For the photos of the original cob wall that fell down, have a look at this post: https://nancyfarmer.wordpress.com/2012/12/06/its-an-ill-wind-that-blows-nobody-any-good/