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Ten years in Melksham - looking forward to ten more.

Archive - Originally posted on "The Horse's Mouth" - 2009-08-11 16:56:23 - Graham Ellis

It's ten years to the day since we bought "404" - our home in Melksham Spa. An eerie takeover, with contracts being exchanged in the morning and we arrived to accept vacant possession just as the sky darked for the eclipse ... the great, tall Spa building in the half light, and the crows from the rookery in the nearby avenue of trees flying around and crowing (as crows do!) at the unexpected darkness. Ah yes - I remember that day.

404 was a wreck when we took it over. No power, no gas, no toilets, no drains. Collapsing ceilings, and water coming in through the wall from the neighbours in a lead pipe. Which is why it took up until December that year to get it habitable, and until September 2000 for us to run the first of our coures there. But really, we haven't looked back; the decision to leave Easterton was correct. The decision to make our new home in Melksham was spot on. We're happy here, we've grown in ourselves, and the town is now so much home that I can't see up making any move away in the next ten years.