My dad often would say ‘look up! Look up!’ and I have such a clear memory of him wandering round somewhere we hadn’t been before – or even somewhere he knew very well, head back, hands in pockets, looking up.
Builders in the past used to take such a lot of trouble to make the upper parts of buildings as interesting as the lower floors; you can find all sorts of unusual brickwork, guttering, chimneys, drainpipes, roofs… sometimes little comical things, things which must have been jokes, sometimes initials, or patterns – do those patterns have any significance, religious, political, pagan? Were some of the marks high up on buildings for protection, or were they secret signs or signals – ‘come in friend, a welcome is here’, maybe? Sometimes the windows are different aloft from below, sometimes things have been added on top of a base, a change of use, a change of material, a change of style, a change of fortune maybe?
Look up! Look up!
Lois Elsden 