Fools Rush In.......

press to enter [click to enlarge this and all images]

At the start, the hall door would not open. We waited, not impatiently, for the day was warm, the morning sun causing the leaves on the stucco to glow a burnished red whilst,  from afar, a church clock chimed the appointed hour. Before us the grass, long since having encroached on to the carriage drive, had been newly cut, the mowing machine standing idle since our arrival. And then we were in.

the south front with the carriage drive grass covered and the hall door open

The Kastély, which we should better describe as Kúria [manor house], is much earlier than previously thought. Here is an early eighteenth century yeoman's house which, some hundred years later, had been remodelled  in the fashion of the period to produce a neo-classical facade and to provide an importance most fitting for a lord of the manor.

the principal entrance with a view into the reception hall

the reception hall looking towards the back hall

A broad sunlit entrance hall, running from front to back, affords access to the ground floor rooms. Those at the front, a Morning Room, Dining Room, and Study have a somewhat ecclesiastical air, no doubt suggested by the arched window recesses and vaulted ceilings. To the rear a series of what in estate agents' parlance may be euphemistically described as the "usual offices" could, with heightened imagination, become kitchen, scullery, pantry, game larder, laundry room, even servants' hall, should they ever be to hand. 

the windows of a possible Morning Room showing the arched ceiling

a pantry, laundry room or even a potential game larder

An unusual spiral staircase, closeted behind Normanesque pillars, gives rise to the first floor and the spacious, south facing 'piano nobile' or drawing room whose three rounded windows afford not only views of the grounds below but also of the distant countryside beyond.

the staircase looking down from the first floor landing

the south facing 'piano nobile' as seen from one of the principal bedrooms

From this room open the principal bedrooms, one with a trace of an elaborately painted ceiling, dressing rooms, and future bathrooms(?), whilst beyond is a dismal rabbit warren of who knows what which could so easily, here with a vague wave of the agent's hand, convert to the most charming of guest accommodation.

the main landing as seen from the entrance to the 'piano nobile'

a bathroom from the days of multiple occupancy

Once more outside we stroll the policies: a neglected orchard here, there a dense shrubbery, beyond the suggestion of a one time kitchen garden. Moles, their tunnels radiating in all directions, play havoc with the lawns of old, rabbits graze undisturbed. Time stands still.

the north wall as viewed from the west corner of the house

And should it be that we ignore the damp, the dry rot, the possible subsidence, the leaking gutters, the blocked down pipes, the toppling chimneys, the glassless windows, the ill fitting doors, the falling stucco, the crumbling plaster, and the ghosts of those long laid to rest? We do so at our peril.

heights of previous occupants recorded on a door frame

Today we seek a surveyor!