Restoration

Just after Christmas, we paid a visit to Warwick, where we had lunch at the Thomas Oken Tea Rooms. I can recommend the pork pie.

Thomas Oken died in 1573, and the tea rooms occupy his house, which is therefore around 450 years old. Despite this, you can see from the photograph that it has electric lights. (Check out http://www.okentearooms.co.uk/index.htm for a fuller description.)

Bringing old buildings up to date is a challenge, and one we face at The Globe. The building has been in only intermittent use for some time now, and would need quite a lot of repair whatever we did with it. Converting it into a pharmacy and café is not at all straightforward, but we have been touched by the degree of goodwill from planners, local councillors and the council's conservation staff.

The Globe is a grade 2 listed building dating from around 1840. Older Truronians will remember when the bar was on the right side and the double doors opened into an internal courtyard. There were a lot of partitions inside that divided the space into small booths or enclosures, and a lot of pillars. The floor and ceiling levels don't line up across the building. Some of the old-looking features are bogus (the ceiling beams consist of bits of 2x2 stuck together in pairs) but some original features are still there. With the help of Dr Gale at Cornwall Council, and Stephen Tucker of SMT Associates, who has been advising us, we have been able to identify the antique features we need to keep.

The frontage is going to be unaltered. There is some restoration to do, but the plan cannot be changed, nor would we want to. Inside, the old granite and slate floor is staying, as is the slate floor that was laid in more recent times. There is a Victorian staircase at the back that will be staying, and a couple of old fireplaces that will not be visible, but will be preserved behind the shelving units. In the café area some wooden panelling will help to make it feel cosy, and there is some original wall. The section in the café, and a length of wall in the new dispensary, will be left uncovered, and the rest will be preserved behind shelving. The shelving, by the way, is being cunningly anchored so as not to damage the old wall.

All this adds to the cost of the work, but we think it's important. After all, you can't put history back later.

On the other hand, buildings have to earn their keep. We have to have burglar and fire alarms, we need a lot of electricity sockets and readers will be pleased to hear that there will be indoor water closets.

We are the last people to want to vandalize anything historic, but if we try to freeze buildings at a point in time, they stop being useful. And the toilets would be in the back yard. None of us would want that.