We are in the middle of various renovations of the old house. It is a constant process, but there is a particular burst of activity at present.

• New ceilings (one collapsed a couple of weeks ago, so we are being extra careful!)
• Redecorating Emily’s room. This was the first room we decorated when we moved here- so I reckon this is some kind of milestone- the first part of the house we have decorated twice.

• New kitchen flooring. We had discovered that flotex, even though it is very expensive, is impossible to keep clean.
• Clearing out all sorts of accumulations of toys, books and clutter to make space for new things to happen. Including (gulp) the cellar, which is chock full of things- wood, bits of metal, almost empty paint tins, broken furniture- that might have come in useful. But now we need the space to install a kiln.

And in stripping back the surface coverings of this old house, you always come face to face with it’s mostly mysterious past. The flowery pencil marks of workmen on the bare horsehair plaster, old brass fittings from doors long gone, bell circuits to summon servants, all hidden under bad renovations done to the building in the 1960s and 70s when the house was a converted into a guest house.

It is impossible not to wonder at the lives lived by previous generations in our old houses.

This house was built in 1840, in a small town on the up. A regular ferry service was established across the Clyde around 1820, and by the 1840’s you could travel direct from Glasgow to Dunoon courtesy of the new fangled steamers. It became fashionable for prosperous Glasgow merchants to have a house ‘doon the watter’ for weekends and holy days. Merchants whose prosperity rested on the commerce of an expanding empire- whose booty poured into Glasgow from plantations of sugar, cotton and tea. A prosperity that rested on the back of slavery and oppression.

Our house was obviously not built by merchants in the top rank. It is one of two identical buildings next to one another and the story goes that they were built for two brothers. They had cornices, but not of the very ornate kind, and the proportions of the rooms were generous rather than expansive. They were sober in their success.

1840. How much has changed, and how much still is the same.

It was the year when the world’s first self adhesive postage stamp was issued- the penny black.

It was the year of the first steam crossing of the Atlantic, by the wooden paddle wheel steamer RMS Britannia.

Napoleon Bonaparte died and his body was brought back to France.

Missionary Scot David Livingstone left Britain for Africa.

Queen Victoria married Prince Albert.

And some great British workmen were knocking in the last nail of a brand new house in Dunoon, Argyll.

Curtains were chosen, and carts lined up to take heavy furniture from the shore up the hill.

A family gathered, excited and thrilled by the smell of new paint.

And here we are, 170 years later.

Screwing together flatpack furniture.

Such progress.