The House That Remembers: A photo essay of 179 burnt ash hill
part 1
There is a long hilly road that leads from the train station to my home. It passes a welcoming pub, glowing with warmth and laughter. We walk on. There is a dark patch on our walk and a house that disappears behind the foliage. I’ve walked that path many times and only glimpsed its front door when the trees wear their winter attire and the winter sun glints off its window panes. It hides in plain sight but on many a passing but many times I have wondered who this house is and what it knows.
part 2
There is talk between friends and neighbours. A rather beautiful old grand house is being sold down the road, around the corner. There is a blue board outside. Not an estate agents announcement but a handwritten note. All in capitals. The bright azure blue background draws my attention. I approach. The house has taken on a new identity. Instead of a GP’s surgery and family home, it has become a museum. Hearsay from neighbours talking about the experience make it sound like something I’d like to witness. I write the sparse opening times into my diary and promise myself to visit on one of the weekends we have access before the new owners move in.
part 3
A normal Saturday morning with a quick jaunt to Sainsbury’s and on the return I pass the blue sign and remember my diary commitment. It’s a damp grey day, when the cold seeps into your bones as my son and I investigate the entrance. It’s the side door where patients would enter the surgery. We are immediately in a living museum with mid-century medical posters and leaflets. Someone accidentally assumes the role of receptionist and welcomes us warmly from behind the desk. We wander through the surgery and through the garage. Chairs piles like old pieces of paper, defying gravity upended. On we wander into the main house. There are tables and exhibits, the young one not so keen to linger. Books in the hallway are piled in pleasing formations. There are books. Many books! We navigate up the stairs as I wonder how many hands used the banister as guests in this home. The bedrooms are colourful and spacious, textures on the walls and windows bring weight to the spaces. Luxurious curtain hang like locks of hair. Old clothes, boxes and suitcases scattered. Worn and well-loved furniture. Pictures and keepsakes. A million stories to be told. At this point I mention to my son that there must be ghosts up here, and I am not joking that boys lanky legs sped out of there as fast as they could. His wandering imagination wondering too much. I was left alone and after a brief conversation with the original owners granddaughter Charlotte, I knew there were more stories to reveal in this house and breathe life into…
part 4
The house is being sold this month. But before the keys are passed to another caretaker of the bricks, there is an event. Considering care and empathy in the medical profession. Although having no connection to this industry other than being a patient (coincidentally having a doctors appointment the day before and after this event and having wildly differing experience on both occasions), I knew there was some value in this conversation. A doctor fresh from Ireland in 1945 somehow embedded themselves into the area that I call home, not afraid to let instinct and morals as well as knowledge influence the lives around him. Dr Carey transformed many lives including a patient to whom he gave him permission to have a holiday for the first time from his family business and gifting him unbridled joy for his final decade on earth. He also believed that you could tell if a patient has a deeper issue they wanted to discuss with you by the nuance approach to the doorknob when leaving your surgery room. We also considered Simone’s Weil’s theory of attention as a sacred practice and The Unfortunate Man by John Berger as a masterpiece of witness, revered as a moving meditation on humanity, society and insight into the value of healing. And additional joy to this whole evening was bumping into a voice artist I used to work with on community projects for Trinity Laban. We hadn’t seen each other in 10 years! She specialises in singing for health, hence her interest here.
part 5
It’s the second week of January and we have already had a months share of rain. Endless cold, dreary, grey days than any January has ever had. Not ideal for our photo session but I was prepared. I’m in my comfort zone now. Thinking aesthetically about the space and creating safety for the sitter. Care was a these of this house and something that is also crucial to my work. I always talk about background being a character in the scene but here this felt even more real and pertinent. These images felt like they were as much about the backdrop as Charlotte and so I really considered the spatial relationship between the two and which colours to highlight and bring to the fore. Charlotte was a natural on front of my lens as she was a living, breathing part of the space, countless memories and emotion held between the walls. Alain de Botton shares with us so eloquently in the opening page of The Architecture of Happiness, an invitation to consider where we live and what we see every day that subtly shapes our happiness, identity, and emotional well-being. That beauty in architecture isn’t just decorative; it echoes deep human needs, reminding us of who we might become. The structure around us witnesses our lives, the trees and bricks remembering what maybe we have forgotten.
“The sun has risen over the gables of the buildings opposite and now washes through the ground-floor windows, painting the interior walls a buttery yellow and warming the grainy-red brick façade.
Within shafts of sunlight, platelets of dust move as if in obedience to the rhythms of a silent waltz.
From the hallway, the low murmur of accelerating traffic can be detected a few blocks away. Occasionally, the letter-box opens with a rasp to admit a plaintive leaflet.
The house gives signs of enjoying the emptiness. It is rearranging itself after the night, clearing its pipes and cracking its joints. This dignified and seasoned creature, with its coppery veins and wooden feet nestled in a bed of clay, has endured much. The house has grown into a knowledgeable witness. It has been party to early seductions, it has watched homework being written, it has observed swaddled babies freshly arrived from hospital, it has been surprised in the middle of the night by whispered conferences in the kitchen.”
We shared stories of our past and our connection to Ireland. The objects we set our sights on, a shared interest in Iain McGilchrist (we were at the same event in Westminster a few years ago but didn’t know!) and all that has happened with the project thus far. I was rushing on to the Barbican for some more portraits that afternoon but the warmth of these moments really made a difference in this long January.
“Now smell the rain in London, it still insists”
part 6
Awaiting a ride on a busy London bus route and another hand-written sign grabbed my attention. All the things in the house are being sold and proceeds going to medical charity. “I must put that in my diary, I thought, “again.” I slip though the front door with many bodies busying about the space, flicking through maps and magazines, stroking furniture and perusing with focussed attention in each room. I joined their searching and investigating but at a noticeably slower pace. I fatigued within minutes and I immediately felt irreverent to move any quicker. I become painfully aware that each object at some point would have been an important part of the story to the owner Charles. And now on a cold January day, strangers are haphazardously picking up and discarding all those memories.
It hurt.
It literally hurt to imagine how anyone could handle these delicate memories with such disregard. Like that moment in a Christmas Carol when Scrooge finally realises who he can really be in his future vision and before seeing his gravestones sees his fellowmen rummaging through his possessions. The closeness of death often does that to a person. I thought of all my books and boxes of tickets. Old magazines and birthday cards. Images from parties that fill the heart on low days. I am also aware that in an unforeseeable amount of time that I will be doing this in my mum’s home. The one I have always known as home. The layers of wallpaper a reference to the various skins and eras of our lives. It was an overwhelming realisation. And one that moved me to tears. Was no-one else painfully aware of this deep nostalgia? Was no one else feeling any of these emotions? A scene from Mad Men played in my mind where Don Draper defines nostalgia when pitching for the Kodak slide projector.
I exit promptly once each room has been surveyed briefly. The space beckoned me to complete the task.
“Nostalgia - its delicate, but potent. It’s a twinge in your heart far more powerful than memory alone.”
This en-suite bathroom left by the previous owner, such a personal portrait of the person who would have gazed upon their own reflection here every day.
part 7
The days are growing longer. The promise of spring is evident for those who are truly seeking. The trees are standing as sturdy as ever and a new invitation awaits those who are waiting.
This project that Charlotte has created from a deep curiosity of the space, it’s memories and in turn how that is a necessary story for the world we live into today has already taken flesh. We meet under the trees, like the Irish hedge schools that are the heritage of this family’s story. Where next we shall see, but I have no doubt that it will keep drawing inquisitive minds to it’s commanding narrative. Most of the visitors local people as this project had little online presence.
Only writing this do I realise we are planning to witness the ash trees that would have been native to Burnt Ash Hill!
PART 8
Before this persisting month bids farewell, we gather in the lounge of 179 Burnt Ash Hill. Many objects and ornaments are in their new homes but some placemats, pencils and paper greet us on the floor. The five of us exchange pleasantries and talk amongst ourselves before Charlotte enters with a teapot, broken teacups and some treacle flapjacks from the still-working yellow kitchen. We are here to draw but in a way we have never drawn before. You may mistaken that as a photographer I must feel adept and confident with a pencil but you would be wrong. Art was my worst subject at school.
Charlotte insisted that although we were here to draw the trees, we weren’t actually making a drawing. We were being present with the branches, leaves and lichen, being attentive towards them and responding onto the paper. We would listen to one of my favourite books Braiding Sweetgrass as we drew in the otherwise silence. Being present together. This mindful experience would sustain me for the week ahead and bring me back to the marvel of nature and it’s extreme exuberance and abundance.
“Nature is the answer, even when you don’t know the question.”
A tree in the Nature Reserve, near where we will meet for future drawing sessions.
PART 9
The next part of this story is still to be written. I feel that as people interweave with Charlotte, that we collectively will draw out more. As it happens I will record it here.
This whole experience took place over a six week period from December 2025 - January 2026. Huge gratitude to Charlotte for following her curiosity to bring our local community together and for letting me be part of her story. It really touched me deep beyond what I expected. We are all as a community still gathering and receiving from an inheritance of care.
P.S. All photos taken by me on my analogue Canon camera, digital Leica and iPhone.
