comes to help each Weekend.
___._.._--- The story of these doughty ladies’
3 adventures would make a good British film
fomedy. ‘Instead of a nice little bottle of Chanel for our
tirthdays, We had scaffolding towers,’ says Amanda.
l"hese were a big improvement on the ladders they had
o balance on while using toothpicks to scrape out the
rld paint clogging the fine plaster mouldings in the
leilings. ‘Six weeks cleaning one square. The pain!’
r Last Christmas moming saw them balancing precar-
pusly on the roof, replacing tiles blownoff the night
lefore. With experts -such as landscape gardeners
l
I
charging beyond their means, they mucked in to learn
every skill themselves +- except plumbing, which
needed an expert to deal with the four-inch iron pipes,
and Wiring, which needed a professional to lay the 400
metres needed  the hall alone. They visited other old
houses for tips, Wheedling free help Where possible. A
gardening teacher gave advice in exchange for a
cartload of horse manure. A stonemason told them how
to grind off the cement laid over the Portland stone
floor in the hall. Patricia, an asthmatic, lost her voice for
a fortnight after that filthy activity. Amanda persuaded
a reluctant joiner, who let slip that his hobby was old
To the manor
drawn: Since buying
Higham Park for the
knockdown price of
£1 million, restoring
it to its former
grandeur has
become an all-
oonsuming labour of
love for Patricia,
above left, and
Amanda