Posted by Peter Hyland on February 28, 2012 at 06:01:55 user Peter_H.
In Reply to: Re: Eternal attraction posted by Peter Ceresole on February 28, 2012 at 05:35:57:
IMO, Tent Lodge has a better claim, as its lawns go down to the water’s edge. Lanehead does not have a lake frontage, but has a mere right of way to a boathouse. Nevertheless, there is available an accurate description, virtually room by room, of the interior of Lanehead in the Collingwoods’ day – see ‘Ransome at Home’ by Ted Alexander. You can see what an inspiring place it must have been.
The fascination that Peter Ceresole mentions is indeed because ‘Beckfoot’ is a sort of central point, a sort of base camp, in the Lake books, and no doubt we all have a mental picture of the interior. The fascination (I nearly said ‘obsession’) with the bathroom and water supply arrangements is rather more curious. I have been giving this some thought in recent years. I have noticed that many of the posts which raise yet again the plumbing topic are from overseas Tarboarders. We in the UK never really worry about where the water is coming from, as we have so much rain (or at least we used to). If you have a house in the Lake District, you simply fill your storage tank from the beck further up the fell. But in the more arid parts of the US, and in Australia too, water supply must be the first problem you face when building a dwelling, and maybe that is why it is of such interest to overseas Tarboarders
However, UK Tarboarders too seem to have a fascination with the bathroom arrangements. Here I have another theory. I have noticed that there is a kind of ‘mischievous’ tone about some of the Beckfoot plumbing postings, as if they are doing something forbidden. AR, of course, never mentioned the lavatorial functions, and he never indicated where the heads were on a boat, let alone where the WC was in the bathroom. I wonder if some Ransome enthusiasts therefore regard speculation about lavatory plumbing as a bit ‘naughty’, even on an open-minded forum like this one? It’s a strange phenomenon. (But judging by the 'toilet' discussion further down, maybe this phenomenon is now over . . .)