The mantelpiece at 31, Church Street, Ross
There is a mantelpiece in a room through the shop and dining room of Bakery 31 that I had heard was carved by Dan Herbert. But was it?
I scrabbled around its base and under the shelf hoping for a signature but could not find one.
In the Ross village interactive map, it is stated that the house originally belonged to Robert Standaloft.
Caterpillars and cocoons, sea serpents, a seahorse and a mermaid
On the south face of the western arch, on the right side as you look at it, is a pair of sculptures that is recognisable, referring to metamorphosis: that change from one form into another, like a maggot into a fly, a caterpillar into a butterfly, from an egg via a cocoon. A pair of five-petalled flowers, not a butterfly, is juxtaposed.
Dan Herbert’s cottage, perhaps
I think, the low-lintelled cottage that I had visited was that one, still standing on the far end of the block, possibly built by Dan in conjunction with his workshop. Perhaps it was a quiet place to be after arguments about the money. He would have built a workshop because he was a monumental mason.
2 hours at the archives all for one sentence
It was the report that I had sought yesterday afternoon in the archive’s rolls of microfilms of the Colonial Secretary’s correspondence (CSO1-654-14662 Z1904). Henry Richardson had accepted a situation as a shopman in Campbell Town. I thought this was reasonable proof that this was the same bloke who had survived the wreck of the Hibernia.
Mona Vale Cottage
To tie up the research into James Colbeck, though with a loose knot as there are undiscovered facts and legends out there to be tied in, I travelled to Lochiel, Ross, the home of Valerie and Roger Lemaitre.