Garage Repointing - 1: First Attempts

I understand that my house was built/completed in 1977, so I assume that the detached single garage that comes with it also dates from around this time?  The garage is of a fairly standard UK design, using single-skin stretcher bond brickwork and a gently sloping corrugated asbestos concrete roof. Whereas the construction of the house has proved to have been relatively sound, over the years I have spent a disproportionate amount of time trying to remedy defects with the garage! Thus far, I have had to deal with a leaky roof, a rotten window frame, a side-door frame that was not properly anchored to the brickwork, and failed pointing. (If I was 20 years younger and had the money to spare, the sensible course of action would be to have the top half of the garage rebuilt once I realised what I was dealing with!)

Around 25 years ago, it became clear that there was a significant problem with the top nine or ten mortar courses on the garage. The exterior mortar had become noticeably recessed from the surface of the bricks, and when touched it was like dust and would fall out of the wall in a worrying manner. It was little better on the inside, and had burst through the coat(s) of white paint? that had been applied sometime in the first 15 years of the garage’s existence. Thankfully, the lower dozen or so mortar courses appeared to be mainly sound and intact, both outside and in.

Now, it is said that a little knowledge can be a dangerous thing, and I was probably proof of that. I knew very little about brickwork and bricklaying, but I had been given a copy of  “The Reader’s Digest Complete [sic.] DIY Manual”, printed in 1994. (The commercial and social Internet was still developing circa the turn of the millennium, so that was of no use…) I was already aware of the purpose of repointing, and it seemed like that was what I needed to do, and my book informed me that I needed to use a cement-sand mixture. Moreover, I should be able to buy a bag of ready-mixed mortar which would spare me the effort of mixing sand and cement myself.

So I went to the local builder’s supplier and bought a smallish bag of “Blue Hawk” dried mortar mix and a repointing trowel. (I figured I could improvise other tools I might need from off-cuts of wood.) I then raked out the topmost mortar course using a woodscrew driven into a scrap of 1” x 2” softwood, and mixed some replacement mortar according to the instructions on the bag. My first attempt at repointing was a bit messy, because the sand seemed quite coarse compared to the old mortar, and I didn’t achieve as tidy a finish as I had hoped.

When the repointing had set, the first thing I noticed was that the colour was wrong! Although there was no mention on the bag, the new mortar was distinctly reddish, and the original mortar was very pale cream in comparison — almost white. I was also not happy with the grittiness of it, and it seemed difficult to work. I thought that the reason the old mortar had failed after only a decade or so was because it was not “strong” enough to resist the weather and needed more binder. So I decided to make a stronger mortar by adding additional Portland Cement (I can’t now remember the proportion I decided on) and used dilute builder’s PVA as a plasticiser. Furthermore, my Reader’s DIY book had mentioned “weatherstruck” pointing, so I would attempt to use that too! (Even though the original was finished in “bucket handle” profile...)

My new mortar mix was easier to work with as I had hoped, and the additional cement effectively hid the red colour of the sand, so I was happy. I then spent most of my free time when the weather was fine over the next two summers and autumns, raking-out and repointing the upper nine or ten courses on three sides of the garage. (The fourth side is east-facing and forms part of my neighbour’s western boundary, and didn’t appear to have suffered the weather as badly.)

Once I had completed the exterior repointing, I made a start on the interior, but I barely managed two courses before stopping for the season. After that, I seemed to lose interest in finishing the inside; and then any further work was put to a more permanent stop after a tidy-up (not by me!) disposed of all my equipment and materials. And thus did two decades pass…

The northern part of the A338: not a Roman road!

I have not blogged for a while!...

In this photo taken in February last year (2024), I am standing on a short section of the former A338 (realigned in the early 1970s?) just outside the Oxford Lane entrance to the village of Grove in Oxfordshire. The view is looking roughly northeast towards Oxford, some 15 miles away. The alignment of the present-day A338 can be seen beyond the petrol station. A number of sources — such as the Ordnance Survey map of Roman Britain — suggest that below my feet lie the remains of a Roman road, which appears to commence at this very spot and head towards Oxford.

For many decades, I accepted that the northern section of the A338 between the northern side of Grove and the junction with the A420 Swindon to Oxford road was Roman in origin, because it was shown as such on maps that I had seen in the early 1970s. Later in that decade, I became aware of the scholarly work of Ivan D Margary in identifying and mapping the Roman roads of Britain; and I believe it was he who first proposed that this alignment was Roman and identified it as route number 164.

In 1992 I moved to Grove and began working in Oxford, which usually meant a daily commute to work and back by bus. Needless to say, I became quite familiar with the northern part of the A338 over the period of 30 years and an excess of 12,000 journeys back and forth! There were plenty of opportunities to study the route from the top of a double-decker bus. Over time, I changed my mind that this part of the A338 was Roman, based on what I understood about Roman roads and how they were constructed — and what I could actually see on the ground.

A well-engineered Roman road is built on an agger (a slightly raised embankment) and normally has ditches on both sides for drainage. Its alignment is usually as straight as an arrow, and only changes to avoid natural obstacles, which may be achieved using a number of short straight sections. The northern A338 does have a number of straight sections which gives it a Roman feel; but most of the current route shows no clear signs of an agger, the ditches (where present) appear to be too close to the metalling, and there are numerous inexplicable (un-Roman) changes of alignment and obvious curves!

Subsequently, further reading confirmed my suspicion that assumptions (“conjectures”) had been made about the northern course of the A338 in the mid-twentieth century, and are still being perpetuated today in recent archaeological reports…

The origins of the section of the A338 north of Wantage actually lie in the construction of the Besselsleigh Turnpike in 1771. At its southern end between Venn Mill and Wantage, the turnpike runs to the east of Letcombe Brook. This became the main route from Wantage to Abingdon and Oxford. (In the latter part of the nineteenth century, the section from Wantage Road railway station to the town of Wantage was used by the Wantage Tramway until it closed in 1945.) 

It is recorded that prior to this, the main road to Abingdon and Oxford (the Roman “trade route”) north from Wantage ran from the modern day Denchworth Road in Belmont (where Roman remains have been found); and kept to the west bank of Letcombe Brook, crossing the River Ock near Garford, before heading over Foxcombe Hill to the River Thames at Hinksey. 

Bill Fuller in his series of histories about Grove and Wantage noted that the old road to Abingdon and Oxford passed to the west of old Grove along the track now known as Cow Lane. It surely then ran northerly on the connecting bridleway (also a parish boundary between East Hanney and West Hanney), and crossed what is now the road linking East Hanney to West Hanney. A little beyond this, the route to Garford has been lost as sections were sold to local landowners soon after the new turnpike was built. Similarly, the route from Wantage to Grove cannot now be accurately traced; as the construction of Grove Airfield in the early 1940s, and subsequent housing development since the 1960s have between them obliterated most of the old tracks and roads in the area.

Given that so little evidence remains today of the Roman route from Wantage northwards, then it seems to follow that it was not engineered to be a military road and main highway in Roman times. (The building of the Besselsleigh Turnpike used a mostly new and straighter alignment, in preference to upgrading the old road.) Perhaps the Roman route north was actually a prehistoric trackway, improved and still in use in Roman times (and later) — like The Ridgeway over the Downs south of Wantage?

Cotman and Van Gogh: shades of grey

I have noticed that the half-pans in my favourite Cotman Sketchers’ Pocket Box are starting to show obvious signs of use. In particular, the Ultramarine and Burnt Sienna paints. This is not a surprise, as thanks to the leaflet packed with my Pocket Box that included a brief watercolour tutorial, I soon learnt that when Ultramarine and and Burnt Sienna are mixed together in appropriate proportions, a lovely grey results. And by using more or less Ultramarine in the mix, a cooler or warmer grey can be obtained. I have found this mixture to be indispensable when tackling landscapes. (Others think so too: the artist Jane Blundell mixes up her own tube colour which she calls Jane’s Grey, and it is now produced by Daniel Smith.)

I suspect that I come across as something of a Winsor and Newton Cotman watercolour fan, but I do like to evaluate other paint ranges from time to time to see whether these might convince me to abandon my Cotman paints! Given that I use up more Ultramarine and Burnt Sienna paint, it makes sense to try this pair of colours first of all, as I have certain expectations about how they should behave when mixed together. Also, the pigments used in Ultramarine and Burnt Sienna tend to be less expensive than others, so these colours usually feature in all watercolour ranges.

In the last couple of years, the Royal Talens Van Gogh line of paints had appeared on my radar, and I had bought a number of 10 ml tubes to see whether these might be used in my usual palette. In particular, I was interested in some of the colours which were only available in other more expensive artists’ ranges. But how did the Ultramarine and Burnt Sienna combination perform?

To find out, I took a small piece of practice paper and drew around an empty half pan with a pencil to make two rows of rectangular swatch spaces. Using a ruler, I drew lines between some of the swatches, with arrow heads to indicate where the pigment had come from. Then I had fun mixing up paint and colouring in the swatches! (See the image on the right.)

I did the Cotman colours first when the daylight was starting to fail, so the intensity is a bit inconsistent. Having read comments about the weakness of the Ultramarine, I was a bit surprised with my swatch: I put three drops of water in the half pan and left it for a few minutes, and then picked up the paint on a No. 6 round brush and transferred it to a mixing palette, where I added another drop of water from a pipette. Then I painted the swatch. Wow!

The Van Gogh swatches were done the next day when the light was better, and I took more care to make them more even. The paints mixed as expected with no surprises. Even when I mixed Cotman Ultramarine with Van Gogh Burnt Sienna, the outcome was exactly as I hoped for.

So a successful result from both ranges: several lovely shades of grey!

What’s in my palette?

 Some months ago, I mentioned my use of a watercolour secondary palette of six paints in preference to the apparent dogma of a split primary palette. But my well-used Cotman Sketchers’ Pocket Box has 12 compartments. So what do I have in the other six compartments? (I know this is a popular discussion subject on Internet forums such as Wet Canvas.)

As supplied and after shuffling paints around to make the top/far row the secondary palette, the Pocket Box would then contain Sap Green, Lemon Yellow, Yellow Ochre, Burnt Sienna, Burnt Umber and Chinese White. Of these, I keep all but the Lemon Yellow and Chinese White.

Even though it seems a little weak, the Sap Green is a good starting point for mixing other foliage greens in landscapes. I like all the earth colours and use them frequently, even though other people have criticised the pigment load of the Burnt Sienna. They suit my way of working.

My current replacement for Lemon Yellow is PY129, called Green Gold by Winsor and Newton, and available by different names in other ranges. (Van Gogh have it as Azomethine Yellow.) It is a darkish green-yellow, and I thought it would be useful for mixing more landscape greens.

I couldn’t see the point of including Chinese White as a palette colour, as you would use white gouache if you needed to paint white areas, surely? Therefore, I have replaced it with Payne’s Gray to provide a convenience dark paint. But I rarely use it. At least it is there in case…

Up to now, my few paintings have used no more than a maximum of ten different paints on each, nor have I needed a colour that I have not been able to mix. This probably says more about my subject matter rather than the suitability of my palette, but it has worked for me so far.

Liquitex Medium Viscosity acrylic paints

As far as I can tell, these were the original artists' acrylic paints, having been introduced in this format as far back as the mid-1950s. Somewhat surprinsingly, they were re-branded as Soft Body Acrylics around 2005 and sold in tubes like the Liquitex Heavy Body Acrylics. However, a decade or so later, the small bottles are now back, but a little taller and redesigned to have a nozzle.

The original format bottles were widely-sold. I bought examples from WH Smith’s in the UK; in an office supplies store in Montreal, Canada; and a local art supplies shop in Oxford, England. They were (and are) excellent paints, being heavily-pigmented and ready for immediate use. (No shaking or stirring necessary.) The screw-on cap with flip-off lid made them very convenient to use. There must have been a large number of colours in the range at its zenith; appealing to artists, crafters and model makers. So why did they disappear from the shops?

Probably only Liquitex themselves know the answer. But I suspect that there are a number of reasons. Cheap imports, competing ranges and more specialised paints.

One other point. The selection shown here includes colours that no longer appear in the current Liquitex ranges. To be honest, I can't think of an obvious use for Christmas Green, but Taupe appealed to me as a scenic colour, and Polished Steel is very useful on models and miniature figures. Christmas Green sounds like a craft colour, and Polished Steel sounds like a hobby colour, so I am guessing that Liquitex stopped producing their craft and hobby colours in order to focus on their art colours?

Malayan butterflies

I was recently given this book — Common Malayan Butterflies by R. Morell — as a gift. It is a fond memento of a time that is now starting to seem a long time ago, because more than 50 years ago butterfly collecting was my first proper hobby. At the time, I was living with my family in Singapore. A friend of the family had a copy of this book and I must have been captivated by the colour illustrations, so thanks to my kind parents it seemed no time at all before I had my own personal copy. For a boy of seven this was a grown-up book with some words that I didn’t understand (and even some Latin), but it was accessible enough and before too long I knew about the biology of butterflies and caterpillars. More important, I could readily identify most of the species I saw flying around my world.

It might seem totally environmentally-unfriendly today, but in the late 1960s butterfly collecting in what we called the Far East was considered to be acceptable, albeit a little eccentric! A number of people I knew were keen, including friends my own age. I suspect that the Singapore of those days was less densely populated and developed than it is now, so there were more green spaces to attract the insects.

As a family, we travelled quite widely around Singapore and Malaysia by car, so on longer trips invariably my butterfly net, supply of specimen envelopes (kitchen grease-proof paper!) and mounting board(s) came with us. I kept no written records of "finds" whatsoever, so it was all by memory. If there was a butterfly that I didn't think I already had in the collection, I would attempt to catch it. Once caught, at that age I was quite happy to dispatch it with a quick pinch in the head/thorax region so it didn't suffer. Then it was into the specimen envelope until I had the opportunity to set out the insect on the mounting board.

 

Lest I conjure up a vision of a young, lepidoteracidal maniac, I hasten to add that I normally caught no more than two of any species. The main reason for this was a lack of display space. I used to have glass-fronted butterfly frames, which were like picture frames and hung on the wall, but were much deeper and they had a thick fibre board back which would accept the butterflies mounted on pins. I was definitely attracted to the larger and more showy creatures for obvious reasons.

The family made two visits to Malaysia's Cameron Highlands, no doubt attracted by the novelty of a more UK-like climate for a few days. Amongst the butterfly enthusiasts, a certain location near there was known to be a place where the stunning Rajah Brooke's Birdwing could be found. My parents obligingly took me there, and I know I caught at least a couple of fine specimens -- the pinnacle of my hobby, I suppose!

The butterfly collecting all came to an end in mid-1970, when my family returned to the UK. I brought my collecting net and mounting boards back with me in the hope that British butterflies would hold a similar fascination -- but the limited number of species, small size and short summer soon put paid to that idea. My net and mounting boards eventually disappeared after a number of house moves, but I believe the butterfly frames may still exist somewhere in the house (loft?). Heaven knows what sort of condition they will be in now.

My original copy of Common Malayan Butterflies (the first edition with a dust jacket, I believe) was stored for many years in the loft of my maternal grandparents' bungalow in Tankerton, Kent. When my mother went to sell the property several years later, a number of items had vanished from the loft, my butterfly book with them. So it was good to be able to finally revisit what had captivated my imagination all those years ago.

Origami

In many ways, I was brought up like my parents were — especially when younger. They were children of the 20th century inter-war years, long before television, computers and mobile phones were common in most households or even invented! In those days it was generally expected that children would make their own entertainment. They were encouraged to read books, take up hobbies and play outside when the weather permitted. Thousands of British young people were raised in a similar way. Were they deprived or disadvantaged because they didn’t enjoy the trappings of the UK in the 21st century? No, far from it! They have since been called our Greatest Generation, because they brought us through the trials of the Second World War and its aftermath, and thanks to their achievements we enjoy life as it is today.

In the early 1970s I could already list things like reading, Airfix kit-building, Lego and stamp collecting as hobbies and pastimes. (I even had a spell as a butterfly collector!) It must have been my friend John in Junior School who introduced me to Origami, the Japanese art of paper folding. Like several things in the 1970s, it was a bit of a thing at the time, no doubt encouraged by a programme on television hosted by Robert Harbin.

What appealed to me was that all you needed was a simple square of paper and a few minutes of time. And the ability to follow instructions carefully and make accurate folds. There were at least two books published at the time as a companion to the TV series, which were a great help. It was even possible to buy special Origami paper in bold colours, but I seem to remember that it was relatively expensive on my modest pocket money budget of the time!

Nearly half a century later, I can still remember the important folds and bases, and produce an acceptable Flapping Bird in a few minutes! Once upon a time, I could even make the amazing 3D Jackstone (by Jack Silverman of the USA?) from memory; but that was nearly three decades ago and my brain has been filled with other things since!