So each morning, after a leisurely breakfast, they set off down the grass track that runs alongside our lawn, passed the tin-roofed shed, carrying saws and loppers, trousers tucked in socks, secateurs handy and steadily cleared, hacked down, cut up and burnt brambles, nettles, elder, thistles.
As they cleared, the cottage began to reveal its secrets: the stacked roof tiles at the back where the beams show there once was a lean-to; the outline of the double staircase on the back wall up to the hayloft; the worn step into the hayloft from generations of feet; the timber remnants of the staircase itself.
We lingered over supper and discussed what this cottage might become.
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