I notice the martlets carved in stone on a shield, above a doorway outside.  A martlet is a heraldic bird based on a swallow. Here they are again. I see  them occasionally around Sussex, on crests, mounted on county buildings  or stitched onto cricket shirts.

Then I go into the modest dining room  that is sort of a thoroughfare as well,  which has the effect of marginalizing  what would have been, once, before  the fire, the room where the servants  ate. More recently though, it was the  only dining room. It is not a banqueting  hall. It is hardly even a dining room. This  passage room where the lady of the  house sat to eat is full of images on blue  and white pottery from Stoke. It reminds  me of the willow pattern, with its story  of forbidden love and the swallows that  symbolise the spirits of the murdered  lovers, depicted in blue and white on  plates.

And in my mind, a connection is made, between the pottery and the  swallow, and the swallow and the martlet. And that these birds and their  stories connect with the pathos of the diminished house, set in the tended  natural splendour of its grounds. And eventually, I think of the ground that  yielded the clay and glaze that make up the images of these birds. It is the  ground, to which all birds must return. I think of the ground under my feet,  that does not belong to the National Trust or the clay company that supplied  my clay but is common to all living things, and where all living things begin  and end.