CHESTER: Attic Nursery or Tent Room

In 2013 I went on holiday to Dorset with my folks, and visited Kingston Lacey. The attic tent rooms made a big impression on my imagination.

One of them was used as a nursery, and the other was the room for a batchelor who wanted to be reminded of his archeological digs in Egypt. 

So I decided that I would recreate a similar tent room in the roof space above my chapel, as an old nursery with toys and pictures that would reflect my childhood, but also to house mementoes of my life as a touring actor, moving around the world as if pitching tent again and again. I have called the room Chester, after the Latin word for a military camp, castra, from which we get place name endings like Leicester, Lancaster, or Colchester. 

Here is the constructed room before pictures and decor are finished. The floor is plywood, scored to look like floorboards and each stained separately. 

The walls are made of card covered with cotton, and lined with beading and cereal packet skirting board, painted to resemble the original in Kingston Lacey. The fireplace and bed are white metal kits I have decorated. The mattress is made of packaging foam covered with material to match the walls.

The window has stained glass depicting Biblical stories that have resonated with me since childhood: the Good Samaritan, St Christopher, Abraham and Isaac, David and Goliath, David and Jonathan, and St George and the dragon. I copied the images from a 1930s window in St Peter-Manfred Church in Norwich. 

As a child I loved half-timbered buildings even more than castles, so I thought it would be appropriate for the nursery to have a half-timbered face. The beams are mostly lolly pop sticks with cardboard plaster between. Here it is under construction.