It's oh so quiet...

You may have noticed that The Blog - and Twitter and Facebook for that matter - has been rather quiet of late. It's not that we don't want to update you with all the wonderful things that are happening here - we're currently open to the public until 19 May, we have concerts and lectures coming up - it's just that there are times when we can't.


You see back in the 1960s when telephones first came to Markenfield, a trench was dug (presumably by hand) from Whitcliffe Lane to the Hall in which the telephone cable was then laid. That trench and that line are still in use to this day. Thinking aloud... perhaps that could be a new claim to fame - the oldest telephone line in Yorkshire... it has a ring to it (ahem!).


Well, as you can no doubt imagine, a trench just a few inches under the surface of the ground, carrying a rather decrepit cable several miles under fields (see photo above) is not the most reliable of communication  methods - hence when the telephone line went down last Monday we were not overly worried - these things happen. By Tuesday - just four days away from our first open day - we were starting to get nervous, and by Wednesday abject panic had set in!!!


Thankfully the line came back on of its own accord - 30 minutes before the BT Engineer turned up!


The trials and tribulations of working somewhere so stunningly beautiful and "remote" from Ripon. We do at least have telephones now... emails are another matter entirely.