I have always felt that old houses will tell you their stories if you let them. My suspicions have been confirmed by the manse I’ve only come to live in this past year: my big, drafty, beautiful old vicarage in Oxford, England, built in the year 1887. You need only sit in a real, companionable quiet; watch the way the light falls across the walls, notice the scuffs on the wooden floors, note the shadows where pictures have hung or children’s growth has been marked.
The walls of an old house are soaked with the voices and stories of all the people who have laughed and wept in them; they bear traces of hands either careful or careless, hands