"Ann and I have always been buyers and hoarders of books...after we were married we put our books together...within three or four years we were finding ingenious ways of crowding in new shelves; within ten years the books were crowding us out of the room.
Photograph to left © Mary Randlett

Immediately after the war we built on a new and much larger room, lined it with shelves from floor to ceiling...This amounts I suppose, to a library," (Roderick Haig-Brown. Measure of the Year. p. 165).
Photograph to right © Mary Randlett

THE KITCHEN

"A planned modern kitchen is many channels of flow and Ann has planned and built her kitchen in this way. Dishes flow in daily succession, from shelves to table to sink and dishwasher and back to the shelves again. Vegetables flow from their storage to sink to stove to table; there is flow from the cold storage locker to the refrigerator, to the cutting block by the stove, and so to the stove itself and the table; cupboards and drawers and counters are planned to use flow - some open and are accessible from two directions, some from only one," (Roderick Haig-Brown. Measure of the Year. p. 118).

THE CHILDREN'S BEDROOM

"When we got married Ann and I were not,...going to raise a lot of children...we had no money,...we had a great many things to do...and in any case it was not at all the sort of world into which wise and conscientious parents should wish to bring children...Within a couple of years we had Valerie Joan lying on a blanket...In two more years we had Mary Charlotte...So Alan came...and after Alan...Celia." (Roderick Haig-Brown. Measure of the Year. p. 104).

THE WOOD WORKSHOP

"When Ann and I bought a house we had very little furnishings and no money at all left over to buy any. So my first job was to build half a dozen tables and few shelves. I approached it with sincere misgivings; it was one thing, I thought, to saw boards and nail shingles and lay flooring for a frame house; tables had to be finished and fitted, with legs all exactly the same length, braces invisible, corners mitered. But the tables were fair enough, in fact some are still around the house, and I have pursued my modest carpentering with steadily increasing confidence right up to the present. After each book I give myself two or three weeks of it, to catch up on all the jobs that should have been done in the year that is past." (Roderick Haig-Brown. Measure of the Year. pp. 157-158).