Old and ruined buildings and gardens have fascinated and excited me since I was a child. Aged just 8 or 9, I often spent happy hours wandering around the residential areas of Thames Ditton and Kington with their beautiful, but often dilapidated, Victorian mansions. I did not know it then, but I know it now, that in these places, I felt the existence of the past and I felt it so strongly that I usually had the need to find a toilet - asap! Goldschmidt Park, above Seeheim, is one such place. The past lingers on the terrace (shown below) and the English-style garden (above) and the garden benches, complete with the ex-owner's family name tags and their dates. I can so easily see pre-dinner drinkers on the above terrace in August 1914 before WW1 changed things forever.
These old buildings, whether houses, factories or train stations are like time capsules to me - places in which people once walked but who are now deceased. This suggests that the buildings outlive all of us. On top of that, these capsules capture the time before me and are frozen in a battle against nature. At the same time, the buildings are mysterious and provoke feelings of nostalgia and, perhaps, remorse. Buildings with peeling walls and forgotten possessions and possessors are exciting. What did these people look like? What did they do and how did they feel?
Abandoned buildings and/or gardens inspire me to see and feel things that I don't see and feel in the ordinary world. In the garden below, ghosts stroll after dinner on a warm summer evening, hush-ups are planned, love begins, hate flourishes. Views like this excite me.
Perhaps, only in these places, standing on leaf-covered pathways, alone and with a cold wind blowing on my face, can I truly feel my place and my role in history. Maybe, this is the root of my fascination with the past... Now, where is the nearest toilet?
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