Sparrow House

When renovating your house, surely your first thoughts would be to sort your own patch. Still, the stonemason, who is painstakingly restoring the old public toilet block on Pier Road in Berwick is sensitive to the needs of his local flock of spuggies.

On a perambulation around Berwick, we meandered our way down through the streets of medieval walls and wealthy merchants' houses, drawn to the sea and the lengthy pier legging it into the North Sea.

Passing on the narrow lane, separating the buildings from the splash of the sea, and getting our kickers in a twist trying to do a ten point turn in a pick-up on such a thin strip of street without falling into the sea, we spotted the sparrow house.

The building has been lovingly licked into shape by its current owner, a stone mason and artist who is taking his time to create a real labour of love. Pass it quickly and it's just another dwelling, but go slow and raise your eyes to the skies and you'll see a big deal of detail which will knock your socks off.

I was drawn to the little wings winging their way in between the cracks in the mortar, but on closer inspection, they were refuelling in a second floor bird buffet built especially for them, alongside a des res bird block of flats...an avian abode in stone.

Standing in soft pink Swinton Sandstone, the old public loos were the perfect place to spend a penny or shelter from the rain under the arches...almost like a Berwick bogs Porte Cochère.

Local people remember practising upstairs for the Majorettes, twirling their batons and stamping in a square on the floor. The local pipe band would rehearse here, too, under the careful instruction of Jimmy and Leslie Denholm.

Here's the building in all its 1960s glory. It was functional and filled with feet and tunes. The building just slightly to the right was originally a blacksmith's, but then became the Coast Guard's Store, and housed the all-important distress rocket lifesaving apparatus.

Image is from the Eric Binnie Collection

Now it's a home for stone to be cut, curled and carved into fascinating shapes and commodities by the man who lives there. I love that you can look back on the life of a building, just as you would a person, and explore its transformations over the decades.

I pulled the car in on the very narrow lane and got out to take a closer look at this house within a house.

Look at the towering grey church with its angular steeple and lancet windows. It's neighbours with what appears to be an old warehouse. There'd be plenty of these along the estuary at Tweedmouth for inspiration. Then a fancy pants little bowed gated bit...maybe leading to the posh ochre house behind, flanked by an intricate tree carving and foliage on either side. I loved what I imagined to be a red-roofed monastery at the end, with what looked like steps leading to the cloisters. So detailed and delightful. And best of all, the houses all had inhabitants, little winged residents who'd claimed their spot in the stonework.

The houses have troughs and perches and holes cut out where the sparrows can roost and rest and refill. The rain catches in the ledges and makes for a splash palace for the sparrows! Such care and consideration have gone into this carving. I love to think of the mind that even conjured this idea up; the balance of artistic thought and practical usage...perfect.

And upon closer inspection, the artist has thought of the birds before himself, as the sparrows have a full hydration station, and through the majority of his windows, he can't even watch the world outside!

There are other elements of masonry mastery dotted about like the tightly nipped claws of the crab curled in kelp, or outstretched in the ridges and runnels of the outgoing tide.

All over, the building is punctuated with the smallest designs and details of exquisite perfection. Look up at the one functioning window. It's closely guarded by the carapaces of two crabs and a forest of bladder wrack and sugar kelp and intertwinded with what I can see as the upturned arches of the old Berwick Bridge.

How to represent your home in one window!

Apparently, the work is ongoing and has been for a couple of decades. Local people are protective of the artist and his unhurried, measured, methodical approach. He doesn't appear to want to make a song and dance about his meticulous, scrupulous stonework. I like that. I also like that if you're not curious about life, you'd walk by and not see a single flicker of his fastidious frieze work.

It's a good reminder to really look and see, and soak in what's around you. There's always details to delight and draw you in...maybe not such subtleties in stone as these...but there's always stuff to keep your mind ticking and link you to the past, the future or the present.

I couldn't have loved this any more.