Our Home

Where we live on Hayling Island
Our House
The Garage/Workshop
Our Garden
Our House in France

Hayling Island

We live in a pleasant house in the south of a small island on the South Coast of England called Hayling Island. There are three web sites dedicated to Hayling and links to them will be found on our home page.

Here is a map   (Click on it to enlarge)

We also have a house in Hayling's twin town of Gorron, Mayenne, France.

Although Hayling is an Island which used to be very green and rural: unfortunately it is now very built up, and each year sees the demise of yet another field or leafy lane. There is a bridge to the mainland, so the journey to Havant our nearest town is only about fifteen minutes, and Portsmouth is about 14 miles by road, although there is a passenger ferry between Hayling and Portsmouth across the entrance to Langstone harbour, and an excellent bus service that connects to it at each end.

Our house is only about 200 metres from the beach, so the sea is a major influence in our lives. We see it from our bedroom window every morning, and one of us will walk the dog down to the water's edge most days. Across the water (the Solent), to the south west we can see the Isle of Wight on a fine day. Directly to the south is the coast of France, although out of sight!

Within about 200 metres in the other direction (to the north) is the centre of our local village called Mengham. There are enough shops of various kinds to supply most everyday needs, church, library, schools etc.

There are three or four other village-like centres on the island, which used to be small communities in their own right, but now with so much urbanization it is difficult to see where one place ends and the next starts.

The House

Our home is a 'dormer bungalow' built about 1912, and although it suffered some damage during the second war when a land-mine fell quite near, it was fairly whole, if in need of a bit of maintenance when we bought it about twelve years ago.

Since then we have gradually transformed parts of it to conform to our particular style of life. As there are just the two of us living here we only need a couple of bedrooms. (We share! the other is for guests!) But we both have lots of interests and hobbies and so we have converted most of our rooms to 'living rooms'. During the conversion process we have tried to incorporate our various skills and interests in decoration and style. For example our main front living area has touches of the 'Art Nouveau' (the true period of the house). Our dining room which is large and high, with exposed roof timbers, has wood panelling with some carving and more traditional furniture.

We are currently converting a smaller room at the front, which used to be a dining room, into what we are calling a 'garden room'. It is in the south west corner, and has a recently constructed conservatory attached, so is warm, sunny, and indeed looks out in two directions into the most decorative part of the garden. The room itself will have quite a lot of decorative plasterwork and stucco on the ceiling. The walls are rag-rolled and will have free-hand painted leaves and flowers. The colours are taken from the leaves of the Actinia, light-green, pink and cream. Katie is currently recovering a 1950s three-piece suite with complementary material.

The Garage / Workshop

The garage that came with the house was very small, just about enough room for a medium sized car. On the back of it there were a series of 'lean-to' rather ramshackle sheds. As the house does not have a lot of storage space we decided we would rebuild the garage, and in the process make it as large as we could in the space, so that we could also use it as a workshop and store.

In fact the garage would now easily take four large cars, however as it happened we use the whole of the inside for storage and working space. We never seem to be able to throw things away and our 'junk' always grows to fill all the available space.

The Garden

When we came to the house the garden was laid mainly to grass with a few rose beds. The roses were excellent and we have kept them where possible, however the rest of the garden had been drastically changed.

We  have created three main areas:

• To the front there is now a shrub border which separates the drive, with its car and caravan, and the front path. And on the other side of the path our only small lawned area, which ends at a rockery, with a small stream which leads down to a largish pond which separated the front section from:
  

• the middle section, consisting of a small patio area under a Eucalyptus next to the pond, and the rest mainly consisting of shingle with small beds of perennials and shrubs. A very small stream winds from the pond to a pebble water feature, which hides the sump for all the flowing water and the pump. As a back-drop to this area, on the northern side there is a rustic trellice up which Clematis, Sweet Peas and Runner Beans climb, and through which there is a gate to:
  
• the 'food' area. Here we have two apple trees and a Victoria Plum, a 'fruit cage' with gooseberries, tayberries, red and black currents, and various raised planting areas bounded by treated wood, with paths between. There are some roses and various other decorative plants in this area, but most of it is used for growing fruit and vegetables.

To the North of the house is a small patio area enclosed on two sides by the house, with some 'outbuildings' to the west and a fence between us and the property to the North. Along this fence we grow raspberries and Kiwi. In the far Northeast corner of our plot is our small greenhouse, not the best position but the only area we were able to find for it.

Page last revised 9 May 2000 (added link to our house in Gorron)
20 February 2000 (added another site for hayling and corrected spelling)