Marsh Hill Road
It was late spring 2003, with summer edging the horizon. The sun was shining, the breeze warm and tires were eating up the pavement. Time slipped away as we zigged and zagged from the Purple Woods, westward and north. We followed the sunshine up hills and down into forested valleys, enchanted with the world outside our windows.
Seven minutes out of Manchester, with countless miles and many snapped pictures behind us we turned west once again. I don’t know why. We ended at the corner of Marsh Hill Road and the car stopped on the top of a hill connected by farms with a beautiful view. Just in front of us, catching us off balance, sitting majestic in the sunlight but strangely silent was a mansion. It was oddly displaced among the country landscape. All the bottom windows were boarded up with blue … the wood warm against the red brick. Quite frankly it captured our attention … fired our imagination. Questions without answers swirled in our heads. There were no people, no sign of habitation, no breath of life. Throughout the day we had stopped to snap pictures of ducks on ponds and small barnyard baby goats behind a wooden rail fence. There was an old farmhouse with range chickens wandering at will over the front garden. We captured two horses leaning into an ancient little truck filled with sweet smelling hay and we snapped pictures of the mansion from many angles.
I wove dreams around that mansion. It would creep into my thoughts at unexpected moments when time allowed thoughts to wander. We went for many drives in countless directions as summer exploded and nature beckoned. We came a second time by choice … to the mansion. Was anybody there now or had it just been closed for the winter? Was it as beautiful as we remembered? It stood exactly as in memory, a house but not a home. The door needed to be open, and the windows raised for the breezes to play up the stairs. The sun waited to warm the walls and chase the shadows away. It needed voices and gardens and window boxes full of colour and curtains crisp … rippling in the wind. It needed to breathe.
It seemed a shame to us to see such a wasted house, cold, lifeless, slowly rotting away with neglect. Our questions remained unanswered and we foolishly followed through with a letter to the owner. It was answered indirectly. The property is now under security with signs on the gate and a car in the drive.
It no longer stands alone, yet it remains unloved, not a home … just a dream ... lost now and forgotten.
