Doors And Windows in our Fisherman’s Cottage

It’s time to revisit our fisherman’s cottage in Fleetwood, on this occasion to check out the bedroom door and window.
Let’s just wait for the thunderous retreat of most of our readers to die away before continuing, shall we?
All done? Excellent. Time to crack on.
This is a photograph of our bedroom door, taken in extremely low light with an extremely naff camera. (It’s quite possibly the worst photograph we’ve ever posted on this board, in fact, even if I am wearing an expensive genuine yak wool cardigan.) Michelle thought the bedroom door might be boring on its own, so she asked me to add a bit of interest by standing in front of it.


And with that the rest of our readers take to the hills looking decidedly nauseous.
Over the years our Victorian cottage has undergone some extensive renovations, not least of which was the removal of the stairs from the kitchen, their replacements running up from the living room, and the creation of a small landing in the process.
Originally there wouldn’t have been a bathroom. A cast iron tub in front of the range, a kettle full of hot water, a block of carbolic soap and the sort of scrubbing brush that’d give its owner an unhealthy red glow, was all that was required back then. With the advent of indoor plumbing, however, it became customary to convert the small bedrooms at the rear of such cottages into bathrooms/bogs.
Exactly where our bathroom and bedroom doors came from it’s difficult to say, (they’re both the same incidentally…‘buggered’, I believe the technical term is) but they’re Georgian in style. That’s not to say they’re Georgian in age. The Victorians made doors to the same design, and considering that when the cottage was converted there’d have been a couple of doors left over, no doubt they were reused with the customary cheapness associated with your average Fleetwood property developer.
The doors themselves consist of four interior panels each set into a mortise and tenor framework with a large wooden separation between the upper half and the lower half, the lower panels being of a smaller stature than their counterparts above.
See…typical Georgian design. (Is there anybody still reading this?)
To be honest, as already hinted at, both our bathroom door and our bedroom door are totally knackered. I gave them a coat of paint recently and almost instantly regretted it. Not only are there numerous filled in divots and holes where various handles and hinges have been attached, unattached, reattached and, finally, wrenched off with a crowbar and thrown in the bin, over the years, but the panels are outlined by a series of holes where tacks were once hammered.
We read somewhere recently about Georgian doors in manor houses separating the servants’ quarters from the gentry’s. These doors had covers panel-pinned onto them to make them blend into the wall. Aristocrats wanted to disassociate themselves with the staff, and a hidden portal to the realms of said unwashed urchins seemed a suitable arrangement by which to keep the psychological horror of such people at bay.
So did our doors originate in some splendid Georgian manor then?
No, probably not. During the latter part of the twentieth century panelled doors became unfashionable. Regarded as tired, dated and drab they were covered by sheets of hardboard, which after a few decades became tired, dated and drab themselves. So the tacky faux-wooden sheets were wrenched off again, leaving a series of little holes around the outside of the door.
Still, they might be tatty, but at least they’re original features.
Enough about the door. Let’s move on to the bedroom window.


(Sounds of the last reader of all waking up from his forty winks with a splutter and quietly shuffling off to put the kettle on.)
What’s probably not immediately apparent in the photograph above (because, let’s face it, it’s almost as naff as the other one) are the textured Art Deco panes that make up the window. Our living room window’s the same. Worth a fortune! Well…no, not really, although they’d cost a fortune to double glaze so they’re staying like they are for time being.
Art Deco originated in France around 1900 with a gang of artistic types known as ‘La Société des Artistes Décorateurs’ (otherwise translated as ‘The Society of the Artistic Decorators’). In 1925 the ‘Société’ organized the ‘Exposition Internationale des Arts Décoratifs et Industriels Modernes’ from which the name Art Deco derived.
The style was influenced by Cubism, Constructivism, Futurism, Neoclassicism and Art Nouveau, although when the fashion caught on in Britain it developed its own vernacular brand of...well…Britishness.
It wasn’t particularly long lived however, and by the 1940s windows such as ours were either being chiselled out and replaced with something altogether more modern by fashion-conscious house owners, or blown out at random into the streets by inconsiderate Nazi bombing raids.
Some of our readers -- what am I talking about? There can’t be anybody left reading this by now. On the chance that there is however, just bear with me – some of our readers will have realised by now that, what with our cottage being of Victorian construction, and what with Queen Victoria kicking the bucket in 1901, it’s highly unlikely that our own Art Deco windows were originally supplied with the house.
It doesn’t matter. We’re fond of them.

Harris and Hughes Guided Cottage Tours for the Terminally Bored. Book now for your own five-minute visit to our fisherman’s cottage (bathroom admission charged separately) followed by coffee and hobnobs on the front doorstep and a quick stroke of the cat’s head. Only £45.99 (not including V.A.T.)