Now my book The Path to Horn Cottage is available as a physical item, which is very exciting, I wanted to take it on a little tour of some of the places that are featured in the book. The obvious place to start was at the rock houses that provided part of the inspiration for Meryall Holt’s cave home – Horn Cottage.
You can read more about my initial research trip to Kinver here, but today, I wanted to celebrate by showing you some of the lovely features and locations at the rock houses.
Here you can see the beautiful sandstone that allowed the caves to be worked into homes easily by the people who lived there. In the background you can see the name “Daz” carved into the stone for all eternity (or until it erodes and fades away). Thanks, Darren! It’s somewhat of a local tradition for people to carve their initials or names into the stone here, which, whilst unsightly at times, feels like an echo of the urge that man has had since the dawn of the ages to make his mark for posterity.
The Holy Austin Rock Houses belong to the National Trust, so of course they have a very nice tea room in one of the restored rock houses. Here you can see the traditional cream tea. We ate outside on the terrace, looking out over Kinver Edge.
Last time I visited the rock houses, it was winter and the fires were blazing inside, making it feel very cosy. This time, there was a modest fire, but the rooms were very cold, despite the warm day. The pantry, in particular, was deeply chilled, which must have been useful in the days before refrigeration. The range in the older rock house, although still much more modern than Meryall’s house, gave me the inspiration for her warm, comfortable fireplace in Horn Cottage. This living room is my favourite room at the rock houses.
The neatly carved and fitted windows and doors are a delight. Like last time I visited, even though it is now summer, it was still overcast and grey, so apologies for the low light in the photos.
After exploring the rock houses and enjoying our cream tea, we went for a long walk in the forest along Kinver Edge. The woods are deep, lush and green. We wandered off our path and ended up walking quite a long distance along the edge as we went in search of the hill fort…
I am pretty sure we passed this stump half a dozen times as we found our way back, in true fantasy novel fashion!
It was a wonderful day and a good way to celebrate the book. I hope you enjoyed the start of my book tour – I’ll be back with more visits to locations that inspired that book soon!
Prudence x
