The Drawer of Things

This summer, we shared a sonic portrait of a home for sale via The Modern House. For this, we worked with the musician and sound artist Alice Boyd, who turned up with her special microphones to record the ambient sound of the barn and the surrounding meadows. What we didn’t know at the time, was that Roger Deakin beat us to it. In 2004, the BBC broadcast two programmes recorded by the great writer, filmmaker and environmentalist from his home, Walnut Tree Farm in Suffolk (which, incidentally, Inigo sold a few years ago). The recordings are no longer available via the BBC, but we have dug them out for you here. The first, Roger Deakin The House, is a mesmerising audio exploration of the interiors of Walnut Farm and the weather, insects and molluscs that move through the house with Deakin. The second, Roger Deakin The Garden, takes us out into the meadows surrounding his Suffolk home, via the moat he dredged and swam in everyday. (His book Waterlog: A Swimmer’s Journey Through Britain helped launch the modern wild swimming movement.) Both are under 30 minutes long and you won’t regret spending an hour in Deakin’s company, listening to him and his home.

We recently spent time in the north London cottage of Kemide Lawson whose new book, House Proud: Black Interiors and Architecture Across Continents and Centuries (RIBA), is out now and it is brilliant. Kemi’s deep exploration of Black homes is divided into four sections – Ancestral Intelligence, Afro-Aristo, Radical Shelters and Future Ancestors – each illustrated with archival and contemporary photography. From Barbadian chattel houses to the West Indian front room, Kemi interrogates how homes reflect identity, resistance and joy. Get your copy today and also, subscribe to her excellent Substack: The Afri-techtural Digest – “a space for thinking deeply about home.”

It’s not for a few months yet, but ‘Mary Anning: Fossil Hunter’ is an exhibition we don’t want to miss. It’s being staged in the Dorset Museum between 30th January-2nd May 2027 and the curator is the novelist Tracey Chevalier, who sits on the board of the museum. This gives us a few months to re-read Chevalier’s 2010 historical novel, Remarkable Creatures, and re-watch Francis Lee’s film, Ammonite, which was loosely inspired by the British palaeontologist, played by an incredibly well-dressed Kate Winslet. (The fossil shop interiors are also very Inigo.) You can read an interview with the novelist by our friend and contributor Dale Berning Sawa over at the ft.com.

Whoever is running the Leominster Heritage socials needs a pay rise. This summer, us and 2 million other viewers had them to thank for this educational earworm about barge boards, corbels and quatrefoils … Follow along at @leominster_heritage for a full architectural glossary and details of how to get involved in mapping the built history of Leominster.

Picture credits: © Holger Hoffman (RIBA) © Adam Firman/Inigo © Jordi Zaragozà Anglès (RIBA) © Toby Mitchell/TMH © Elliot Sheppard/TMH