The antidote to beige
Hanging around in Saffron Walden a few months ago, waiting for the Fry Gallery to open and some friends to turn up, I admired the nearby cottages, with their coloured walls. Where I live in the Cotswolds, nearly everything is made from limestone – “gorgeous, honey-coloured limestone” as the tourist brochures, never shy of a cliché, like to put it. Well, Cotswold stone is handsome stuff, and it has a colour palette that extends well beyond the brochure’s honey, embracing a variety of subtly varying shades from pale silvery grey to a sort of toffee brown. But sometimes, especially when not softened by flowers or greenery it can feel a little, well, beige. So I can find something to admire in a bit of colour wash on the walls of town houses, and have posted in the past about my love of pastel shades in places from Warwickshire to Lyme Regis. Coloured walls go back a long way, though centuries ago the results were more likely to be plaster tinted in yellows, ochres, or blood reds than these shades from the paint box. But, old-style shades or new, hats off to the people of the colourfully named Saffron Walden for putting some colour on their houses too.
