Hooray and Up She Rises...

I was very happy to be home last week to see several small milestones met on the building project. The first small but satisfying moment was seeing the erection of the clock tower and weather vane on top of the carriage house.

It arrived at the end of last year and had been wrapped up on a pellet inside the foyer... 

There was talk about getting a crane in to set it atop the roof, but when the digger was on site to start on the courtyard contouring the builders decided they would use a combination of the digger and the construction of a roof ladder to shift the components up there themselves, which proved an ingenious idea...

Above: The digger lifting the carcass of the tower up to the builders.

Below: The tower sitting on the lowest rung of the roof ladder.

Above and below: The tower being shifted up the ladder rung by rung...

Once the tower was up on the base and secured they did the same with the lead pagoda-styled roof...

And then assembled the weather vane, checking the compass points were accurate (the weather vane is set to true north whereas the manor is built on magnetic north)...

A sense of accomplishment...

Now it just needs to have its electrics wired and then it will be fully functional!

We are now fully back in the blogosphere, with 14 posts set to be published during the month of March, so due visit regularly, as we would love to share our progress with you.

Cupolas, Clock Towers and Turrets...

The Carriage House roof is now complete, or at least the slate is on, but it won't be properly finished until the cupola is craned on. The cupola or probably more correctly turret from the latin turris for tower, resembles the one above, and will sit over the gap in the middle of the roofline...

 Above and Below: The Carriage House (back and front respectively) with the slate tiles on the roof. Note the gap in the centre of the roofline for the cupola.

The manor was originally going to have a cupola on top, but the chimneys already breached the 10m high 'building envelope' and required us to get a special dispensation. I can not imagine we would have been able to build the cupola (I love NZ dearly, but it does suffer from tall poppy syndrome and many froward people will opposed anything which is different). The cupola for the manor was based on that of Belton House...

However, the small cupola on the Carriage House with its weather vane and clock faces is well within the envelope and has been signed off without any concerns. Originally a cupola on a barn, stable block or carriage house had a practical purpose - the louvres allowed ventilation in what were usually fairly musty buildings full of hay, silage and live animals. Beyond their practical use, they developed more ornate designs, usually incorporating a weather vane and a clock face on one if not all sides, and sometimes a bell...

Weather vanes 

The term weather vane derives from the old English word fana, meaning flag. Weather vanes date back to the ancient Romans and Greeks, a notable example being the weather vane atop the temple of the eight winds in Rome, which comprised the God Neptune with his triton pointing in the direction of the wind flow...

Today weather vanes often take many whimsical forms. Here are some particularly lovely ones...

Above: A traditional trotting horse weather vane

Below: A not so traditional flying pig (I would like to get a flying pig weather vane for the barn).

We are pricing up various electric clocks at the moment. I really like this one with a black face and gold numerals, matching the black and gold theme of WBP, from Outdoor Clocks UK...

with maybe an Oxford blue one for the chapel bell tower...

Here are some more of their clocks and turrets...