Renos

Has there ever been a time when people’s urge to renovate their home was absent?

Apparently not.

Nowhere is this urge to improve more interestingly displayed than at the Red Lodge Museum in Bristol, on Clifton Hill, overlooking the city and the inner harbour.

Four centuries ago The Museum was just a great big family home. Built in Elizabethan times, the entire 2 storey house was panelled inside in natural oak, as was the fashion in the 16^th century: carved oak panels on every square inch of every wall, oak carvings on the entire ceiling, oak doors, oak trim, oak moldings, oak baseboards and oak cornice detail, acres of oak everywhere.

It must have felt like living inside a tree.

Originally light-coloured, the oak had over the decades and centuries oxidized and darkened to a deep almost coffee colour. If that doesn’t sound all that appealing, it isn’t, and it wasn’t that appealing to the family who owned the house in the 18th century, 200 years after it was built.

So, just like someone who buys a house today filled with shag carpet, melamine cabinets, avocado appliances and pink bathrooms, they decided to renovate.

Ripping out most of the dark oak on the main floor, they replaced it with the fashionable architectural and interior décor of the Georgian period: smooth plaster walls painted in light pastel colours, richly decorated white plaster ceilings and cream coloured wainscotting. Then they built on more space in the same style and colours, to create a large, light, bright Georgian space typical of the 18^th century.

But maybe for budget reasons, or perhaps because they couldn’t be bothered or, perhaps, after renovating the main floor they were just sick of dealing with contractors, they decided to leave the upstairs alone.

The result? Two time capsules: the main floor is flawlessly 18th century, the upstairs is equally flawlessly, oakenly, darkly, oppressively 16th century.

You go 200 years back in time through the red entrance door and 400 years back in time by climbing the staircase.

It’s an upstairs-downstairs time machine that reminds you that while architecture and design are always changing, human nature remains constant, and the desire to own “the newest thing” has been with us always.