Green Door

What’s that secret you’re keeping? Behind the green door....So went the lyrics of a song I remember from early childhood.

There is a lot of artisanal wood furniture manufacturing done around the Midlands, with outlets such as Homewood (my personal favourite), The Good Furniture Company, Corrie Lynn, and Furniture for Life all being part of the Midlands Meander craft routes. On the district road between Curries Post and Lions River I had seen signs for Swiss Furniture and Flintstones Furniture and decided to follow the bumpy dirt track signposted as the road to their displays. They no longer operate, the signboards proclaiming their whereabouts remain as their tombstones, and the farm on which they were situated is now for sale. That bumpy piece of track leads to a derelict couple of buildings, one being the sad bones of what must have once been a grand Victorian country house. A somewhat aging handwritten notice simply says Farm for Sale, followed by a cellphone number. Judging by the notice’s now greening fungal state this farm too is a victim of the current slump in property markets. A characterful tenant from one of the farm outbuildings greeted my coming (well in truth he ambled out inquisitively some ten minutes after my arrival) and told me that the building dated from the late nineteenth century, but had been unsympathetically altered over the years almost beyond recognition as the grand old lady of early photographs.

I just checked up on that song and I see it was a #1 hit for singer Jim Lowe (who?) in1956. It has had a number of revivals in the years since - becoming yet again a #1 chart topper for Shakin' Stevens in 1981 and even a Spanish hit version in 1986.

How does one capture so much sentiment in a single shot?  I photographed the house from countless angles. I tried my camera’s sepia tone setting. I went to black and white. But looking through all of these images somehow the one that best tells the story is this simple picture of the green front door - keeping all of its secrets.