As Forest Hill burned, residents in the surrounding hamlets of Perry Vale, Honor Oak and Brockley  boarded up their windows and prepared themselves for the worst. Shop shelves emptied in hours as women stocked up on supplies in preparation for a siege, whilst men took breaks between hammering planks over their windows to meet on street corners and tutted loudly with each other whilst stroking their whiskers. Everywhere seemed to be a hive of activity, everywhere except at Shardeloes, the quaint little cottage at which Odham MacGuinness resided prior to his move to Buckthorney.

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Shardeloes was a late 17th  century cottage on the borders of Brockley and Newecross. It had been built in the popular Kneeknocker tradition of that period and had been home to Odham MacGuinness and his first wife Maudline. They had spent four very happy years here before Maudline, tragically passed away from Blight at the tender age of 14. Grief stricken Odham MacGuinness retreated to the place he felt safest, his beloved potting shed which he had painted blue and named for reasons known only to himself as ‘The Blue Pottingshed’; it was here that the grieving gardener locked himself away, and refused to come out for 8 months, subsisting entirely on a diet of rain soaked lichen and bits of terracota. When he finally did emerge, Odham MacGuinness decided to find someone to look after  Shardeloes whilst he went in search of work elsewhere to help him recuperate. As fortune should have it, Butler Smith was looking for accommodation whilst builders carried out renovations to his Cheese stacks and Odham MacGuinness readily offered him the keys to Shardeloes during his absence. Within a week, Odham MacGuinness was gone, and Butler Smith, along with his trunk of elaborate costumes* had moved in.

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Following their hurried departure from Kings Lynn Odham MacGuinness, Butler Smith and Jonty Climpson had retreated to charmed stillness of Shardeloes. Butler Smith was staying once again in chalet, and Odham MacGuinness had made arrangements for Climpson to stay for a spell at Pendril House, owned by his friend, the   renowned author and scowler Christian Darkin. Over the next few days  a kind of peace settled at the cottage; Butler Smith was strangely quiet in the chalet, and Climpson was getting acquainted with Darkin and London life in general. This time alone allowed Odham MacGuinness to reflect on what he wanted to do with Shardeloes; he had grown tired of the gardens, and memories of Maudeline refused to go away, but how easy would it be for him to start anew somewhere else?

This welcome chance to reflect continued for three days before being completely shattered by the sudden arrival of an apoplectic Climpson at his door. Shaking with rage and brandishing a newspaper in his clenched fist, Climpson brushed past Odham MacGuinness and stormed into Shardeloes, running from room to room  and demanding to see  “That thieving  bastard Butler Smith” .

*See previous Edition: ‘A Word On William Butler’