Behind a veil of velvety green, where the wind barely dares to breathe, a closed farmstead slumbers like a sleeping secret. No name, no sign, only a circle of stones that time itself seems to have forgotten. Once the heart of a vanished world, it carries a core from the 17th century, cloaked in the garb bestowed by the late 18th century. Protected, untouched, it breathes a silence so pure that it touches the passer-by’s soul like a forgotten song.
Around a rectangular courtyard, an inner world unto itself, a smaller yard extends to the northwest – a silent dance between life and labour. The living quarters bend in an L-shape around the hidden court, marked by a stone from 1801 that whispers of rebirth. In the shadowed wings wait the stables, one rising two storeys high, still guarding the arched windows of yesteryear. The gateway, a basket-arch of pride and time, bears a dovecote like a crown from 1798. Further on stretches the transverse barn of 1791, a hollow echo of carts long silenced.
Whitewashed marlstone flows beneath saddle roofs like snow under a crimson sky. Segmental eyes stare blindly into the world, round-arched doors gape like silent mouths, wall anchors hold the centuries together, owl holes gaze into eternal night. A brick scar from the 19th century and a roof that humbly bowed reveal that even stones yield to time. Now it is no longer a farm – perhaps a home, perhaps a ghost of heritage. The silence leaves us guessing.
For those who tread softly, this is a cathedral of whispers: a stone bleeding with age, an anchor rusting in quiet protest, a dovecote keeping watch over emptiness. Light slips like cobweb through dusty windows and kisses walls that still smell of hay and distant voices. No decay, only a dream that waits. A farmstead breathing in the shadow of the world, protected by its own oblivion.
It is a time capsule without a key, an exemplar of what once was and shall never be again. No collapsed roofs, no screaming paint. Only a peace so deep it is sacred. Here one does not come to take, but to listen. To read the stones like an ancient prayer, and to leave with the echo of centuries in the soul.
