#jacobean architecture

[dec0mposing]

McLean Institute, Christchurch, New Zealand (1900s)

Built in a Jacobean style between 1899 and 1900 from Aotearoa (New Zealand) native timber Kauri, McLean Institute, originally known as 'Holly Lea' (later McLean's Mansion) is one of the biggest wooden residentail buildings in the world, and was the biggest residential building in New Zealand at the time of it's construction. Commissioned by Allan McLean, a scottish philanthropist, the building is now a category one historical building, despite sustaining a fair bit of damage in the Christchurch Earthquakes, she still stands to this day but is looking for a new owner who will hopefully restore her to her former glory.

This personally is my favourite building I've encountered and I hold dear in my heart, I really hope for her to be claimed by someone soon before the perils of time ruin her beyond repair. It's been 13 years now since the most devistating of the series of earthquakes we had in Otautahi (Christchurch), where she has since stood boarded up behind a big metal fence over the past decade and a bit.

[fashionsfromhistory]

Miniature English Bedchamber of the Jacobean or Stuart Era, 1603-1688

Narcissa Niblack Thorne & Unknown Artisans

c.1937

Art Institute of Chicago (Reference Number: 1941.1187)

[vintagehomecollection]

Detail of a fireplace at Blickling Hall, Norfolk. Blickling is a fine Jacobean house by Robert Lyminge built on the site of an earlier house. It was extensively remodelled in the eighteenth century.

The Fireplace, 1994

[theliverpudlianuk]

😍 Incredible Jacobean panelling in the Liverpool Anglican Cathedral. The term comes from architecture dating back to or bearing characteristics of architecture during the reign of King James I from 1603 to 1625.

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[andibuilds-simblr]

Foxwood Hall · 50x40 · Furnished, CC Included

A historical residence inspired by Jacobean architecture!

Download and info under the cut...

Most packs required - the build is placed in Henford on Bagley, of course!

5 bedrooms, 3 bathrooms, and all sorts of indoor and outdoor spaces :) The interiors are very warm, with lots of green, gold, and red, with British heritage elements. Fully furnished, with CC included. My special thanks to @felixandresims for the incredible build/buy sets, as well as @lilis-palace, @sooky88 and @itskingfalcon for other beautiful elements such as fences, rugs, wallpapers, fountains, and roof decor. As always, I encourage you to browse the folders by creator and visit their sites for more beautiful content.

Download Here (GoogleDrive)

[hometoursandotherstuff]

The outdated style I dislike most is the decade of the 70s. This home is an example of why. (I bought an 80s house and it was so dated that I couldn't afford to redo it, and that's the problem you have to consider when buying, even if the price is lower.) This one, in Ottawa, Illinois, was built in 1970 & has 4bds, 3ba, $325K.

Okay, this is just silly. Cut the hedges back, the lions look like they're in giant green butt cracks. Let's go inside- I hope you enjoy this 70s throwback.

The oval leaded glass door with 2 side lights were the gold standard, as well as the pony wall planter, spindles and red carpet.

The 70s introduced large stone fireplace walls. In contrast, there was fussy, fancy, metal (or plastic) grill work, as seen in the doorway.

The 70s changed the color of wood- it became extremely dark, through the magic of Jacobean stain. The style included faux brick (which was not yet perfected and looked so faux), carpeted kitchens and ornate cabinetry with plate rails.

But the most distinctive feature was the kitchen lamp post. Even if I gutted this kitchen, I would keep that lamp post, b/c it's such a classic. I've even seen them built into the middle of kitchen tables. (Note the faux brick backsplash.)

Variations of this beloved bedroom set were in so many homes. Even my grandparents had one (and I inherited it). Plus portraits of the children on black velvet.

Wallpaper, fancy and flocked, even if it didn't match the style of the room.

There was a Toile Revival, too.

And, big, dark heavy furniture with fancy foo-foo ruffled fabric or fabric with eyelet borders. Notice the architectural detail of the bed on a platform with a heating vent for practicality.

This fireplace was redone- they removed the mantle, in favor of a shelf, and framed in the hearth so they could display statuary.

It was also the advent of the wall-to-wall carpeted bathroom and tub draperies.

Note that red shag carpeting fades over time, and also pills, balls up, and irretrievably matts down. Check out what looks like a lighted nativity scene in the fireplace.

Ah, the manufactured "colonial" creations. Hanging metal fireplaces adorned with eagles and sofas with spindles, pleated skirts, and pastoral or historic Americana scenes. Wherever there was an opening, put up a fancy railing and/or panel.

What a bonus! A home beauty salon! Also, note the textured paneling and another popular feature- jigsaw cutout wood valances on everything from the kitchen cabinets to windows, to walls. (Also, there's a good example of how red carpet fades, in the corner.)

Some outer details (note the cutout valance even on the roof of the house).

I didn't expect a farm, but there're definitely barns and a silo on the property.

3.67 acres of land.

https://www.zillow.com/homedetails/2855-E-13th-Rd-Ottawa-IL-61350/115664434_zpid/

[labuenosairesfrancaise]

Wollaton Hall, Nottingham

Hi guys!!

I'm sharing Wollaton Hall. This is the 7th building for my English Manors Collection, and I will add many more!

House History: Wollaton Hall was built between 1580 and 1588 for Sir Francis Willoughby and is believed to be designed by the Elizabethan architect, Robert Smythson, who had by then completed Longleat, and was to go on to design Hardwick Hall. The general plan of Wollaton is comparable to these, and was widely adopted for other houses, but the exuberant decoration of Wollaton is distinctive, and it is possible that Willoughby played some part in creating it. The style is an advanced Elizabethan with early Jacobean elements.

Wollaton is a classic prodigy house, "the architectural sensation of its age", though its builder was not a leading courtier and its construction stretched the resources he mainly obtained from coalmining; the original family home was at the bottom of the hill. Though much re-modelled inside, the "startlingly bold" exterior remains largely intact.

The house was unused for about four decades before 1687, following a fire in 1642, and then re-occupied and given the first of several campaigns of re-modelling of the interiors.

The hall remains essentially in its original Elizabethan state, with a "fake hammerbeam" wood ceiling of the 1580s, in fact supported by horizontal beams above, but given large and un-needed hammerbeams for decoration.

In 1881, the house was still owned by the head of the Willoughby family, Digby Willoughby, 9th Baron Middleton, but by then it was "too near the smoke and busy activity of a large manufacturing town... now only removed from the borough by a narrow slip of country", so that the previous head of the family, Henry Willoughby, 8th Baron Middleton, had begun to let the house to tenants and in 1881 it was vacant.

The hall was bought by Nottingham Council in 1925. Estate and personal papers of the Willoughby family were used to create the Middleton collection at the department of Manuscripts and Special Collections, The University of Nottingham. They include the Wollaton Antiphonal and the single manuscript holding the 13th-century post-Arthurian romance Le Roman de Silence.

Nottingham Council opened the hall as a museum in 1926. In 2005 it was closed for a two-year refurbishment and re-opened in April 2007.

More history: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wollaton_Hall

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This house fits a 50x50 lot and features a great room, a formal dining room and a daily breakfast room, a great library, his and hers bedrooms, 2 royal bedrooms with their formal sitting rooms.

This time I decorated most of the rooms for picture purposes, but as allways, you can make it your own!

Hope you like it.

Be warned: I did not have the floor plan for the 2nd floor. The distribution is based on my own decision.

You will need the usual CC I use: all of Felixandre, The Jim, SYB, Anachrosims, Regal Sims, TGS, The Golden Sanctuary, Cliffou, Dndr recolors, etc.

Please enjoy, comment if you like it and share pictures with me if you use my creations!

Early access: August 15.

DOWNLOAD: https://www.patreon.com/posts/103223415?pr=true

[marzipanandminutiae]

my lockscreen is allerdale hall too omg

She

(also that image was used to illustrate an article called "A Return to Victorian Architectural Values," which- while I agree with the principle of the title; down with greige minimalism, glass walls, and shoddy construction, although multicultural cities really ought to also take inspiration from other global architectural modes in other new buildings -is hilarious. because Allerdale is Jacobean with Victorian modifications, canonically. almost 200 years older than Victorian architecture!)

[rainbowmoonstonestories]

Let Your Dreams Be Your Wings | Chapter 1

Chapters: 1/? Fandom: The Sandman (Netflix 2022) Rating: Explicit Relationships: Dream of the Endless/Morpheus x F!Reader Characters: Dream of the Endless/Morpheus, Lucienne, Matthew the Raven, Mervyn Pumpkinhead, Hob Gadling, Death, Rose Walker, The Corinthian, other minor Sandman characters, Original Characters. Warnings: 18+ content (upcoming, minors DNI), explicit sexual content, POV switching, very long chapters to read (you can skip parts if you think it is too much). Summary: You always dreamed of becoming a successful Fashion Designer, sharing your creations with the world and making your father proud. But with him being very ill and so many costs solely weighting on your shoulders, things didn’t go as planned and you had to take a different path instead. An interesting offer led you to the elder Alex Burgess and you were hired as a new housemaid for a very good pay. However, your kindness and outstanding empathy convinced the man to give you an additional task for a doubled compensation; gaining the trust of Dream Of the Endless, held captive into the basement for over a century. Despite the shock of finding such an ethereal entity stripped of all his clothes and contained into a confined space, you had to accept for the sake of your father. But the more you got to speak to the mysterious anthropomorphic personification who didn't utter a single word, the more you were lost into his eyes that, conversely, seemed to contain the entire universe. A deep connection formed between the two of you, separated only by a thick layer of glass.

Little did you know, what started like a simple housemaid job was about to change your life forever.

Author's note: This was originally planned out as a oneshot, but in the end, I realized I wanted to write more and essentially cover the main events of Season 1. Please note that I don’t really know much about the comics although I’m doing some research, therefore, I can mainly base my knowledge and impressions over the Netflix show.

Credits: The moon dividers were made by firefly-graphics.

Chapter 1

The massive Fawney Rig Manor in Wych Cross made you feel as if you had entered a completely different dimension. The structure was very old-looking, with gothic details that, at least from the outside, could give anyone the chills. The first time you visited the Manor you had to swallow your uneasiness and forget about the rumors involving the potentially dark secrets surrounding the house. With a sick father depending on your care and financial support, you found yourself in need of the salary offered by Mr. Alex Burgess.

Your waitress job was far from profitable and you knew they couldn't afford to give you, nor anyone else, a raise at the time. Covering all your expenses each month had become too much for your pockets alone and such a low wage was just keeping the noose around your neck. With Mr. Burgess’s offer, you would receive twice your previous pay, free room and board and a potentially long-term contract that seemed particularly fruitful and just generally ideal for your needs. You couldn’t allow yourself to be picky and miss such a golden opportunity without at least trying, not for a bunch of rumors that could easily be made up.

As soon as you stepped into the entrance hall, you could smell old wood and incense in the air. The interior design was the perfect Jacobean Revival Architectural Style that you were expecting to see and overall it looked way less scary than the exterior part. You were accompanied along a corridor, ancient items and antique furniture could be found at each corner, against every wall. Long flights of stairs reached the upper floor, big curtains were creating divisions in the open space areas.

Different items were meticulously catalogued and arranged everywhere, looking like they were coming straight from 1900, frozen in time.

When you met Alex Burgess and his husband, Paul McGuire, you could feel your nerves finally loosen up. The Lord of the Estate could barely walk, carried around by his spouse on a wheelchair and constantly under medical check. He looked rather frail and definitely less intimidating than you had anticipated, far from the evil mastermind that you had pictured into your head.

In the end, they hired you as one of the housemaids. You couldn't tell if your personal story touched them more than you thought it would, but you got what you were hoping for and you couldn’t be happier. Your inbox was still filled to the brink with unpaid receips from your family doctor, which you still had to pay off.

The day you visited the Estate again for the final agreement, Mr. McGuire gave you a complete house tour to let you acquire some familiarity with the place in advance. It was even bigger than it seemed and the fear of getting lost became quite consistent the more rooms you came across along the way.

After finally moving in, it took you a couple weeks to get used to your new routine. Suffering from insomnia you were quite the light sleeper by nature, but finding yourself in a completely different environment had caused you a bit of destabilization.

The rest of the staff didn’t seem to be particularly interested in acting friendly with you, so the moment you gained enough confidence to go through the house on your own, you didn’t need to worry about striking a conversation anymore.

There were some rooms marked as ‘off limits’, but you had expected as much. Every now and then, you could spot at least one guard or two standing in front of the basement door, a very slim entrance you didn’t even notice at first. There was something big going on down there, you could feel it in the pit of your stomach whenever you passed by, but you promised yourself that you would mind solely your own business and only do what you were getting paid for. You forced yourself to move on and never looked those guys in the eyes.

However, apprehension and curiosity were starting to nib on you. The times they left the door unattended to take care of matters inside, you had to restrain yourself from peeking, just to discover what they were containing that was so important it could not be revealed.

You didn't know what came to you, really. You never were one to mind other people and their business, but something just seemed disturbingly weird and you were having a hard time brushing it off.

The first month at the Manor went through quite smoothly and you were actually starting to appreciate your job as a whole. Mr. McGuire assisted you with the main tasks in the garden, as he used to work there himself before marrying Alex and passing his responsibilities to someone else. Spending time in the open was fun, dipping your fingers into the grass, the earth and the water felt grounding and liberating. It was tiring, yes, but amazingly satisfying and ideal to set your mind off things.

Inevitably, cleaning proved to be exhausting. The first week you had to bear with aching muscles and serious back pains, but nothing that some good rest on your day off could not relieve.

From time to time, they liked hosting parties with a selective number of wealthy guests, with which you had absolutely nothing in common. All you could do was smile, pour them drinks after drinks and listening to their rants or personal stories when alcohol hit them. Nothing particularly interesting or noteworthy, but again, it served as a good distraction and you appreciated the interactions.

Mr. McGuire had become a friendly presence for you in the house, often stopping by for some tea during your breaks. You could see an incredible gentleness sparking into his eyes, but there was something else in the man’s expression that you couldn't quite understand yet. His husband, on the other hand, was barely seen around the mansion. You assumed that his physical conditions were preventing him from leaving the bedroom, so you didn't want to pry.

One night, you were cleaning the coffee table in the living room space, filled with the clutter left by a group of noisy visitors. The basement door was right there beyond the open curtains, guarded by a man and a woman who eyed you up and down when you arrived. As you placed the scattered napkins, empty cigarette packets and dirty wine glasses on a silver tray, you felt their presence even though they weren’t on your line of sight. You thought they wanted to keep you under their radar to be sure you wouldn’t snoop around too much, but as curious as you were, you certainly didn’t want to risk your job for something you weren’t allowed to see.

Still, it was bothering you, not knowing what the basement actually contained. Were you even safe there?

In the end, you decided that you didn’t really want to know, for your mental sanity.

The next day, you were planting new seeds into the garden with your knees deep into the topsoil, enjoying the warmth of the sun finally kissing your cheeks and invigorating your skin. From the corner of your eye, you could spot Mr. Burgess coming over on his own, slowly maneuvering the wheelchair in the grass and taking place in front of you.

Looking up from your handwork, you greeted him with a gentle smile. You were surprised to see him there, without his lover and with no nurse accompanying him around. “Good morning Sir.”

“Good morning, Miss Y/LN. Such a lovely weather today, isn’t it?”

“Indeed. How are you feeling today?”

Admittedly, he got even paler compared to the first time you saw him. And yet, he still looked rather distinguished with that black suit he was wearing.

“Much better, now that I can breathe a bit of fresh air. I had to beg Paul for an hour before he could finally allow me to get out. He told me you would be here.”

You assumed he accepted to let Alex out because of your presence in the garden. You didn’t have any sort of medical experience, but you proved to have good reflexes and a strong initiative when required.

In other words, no pressure or anything...

“He seems rather fond of you lately and I can see why myself. Nobody is taking this as seriously as you do, you are not afraid of getting dirty.”

You blushed a little, it was rare to receive compliments for your efforts on the job. “Thank you Sir.”

He stayed there, watching you in silence as you continued digging into the wet soil with bare hands. He got lost in thought, adjusting the warm blanket over his legs and pushing his black glasses further up his nose.

And then, he spoke again. “Can I be honest with you, Miss Y/LN?”

You could see he was getting nervous now, fingers gripping the blanket even harder. From behind his glasses, you could spot a pair of reddened and very puffy eyes. There was more than a physical uneasiness affecting him somehow, that much was clear.

You stopped your motions and curiously looked back at the man. “Of course.”

“When you told us about your father, when I saw how resoluted you were to work so hard for his sake, my emotions got all over the place. I never had a good relationship with my old man, you see... he always compared me to my brother Randall because I didn’t turn out the way he wanted. Unfortunately, he died at Gallipoli when I was still very young.”

You didn’t know he had a brother. “Oh, I am so sorry to hear that.”

Mr. Burgess smiled slightly. “My father didn’t take it well at the time. To him, Randall was his only legacy and he never acknowledged me. I did my best to follow his lead, to please him whenever I could, to be the son he expected me to become. In the end, it was never enough. I was never enough.”

You grew up with your father as an only child, you had all the love, attention and care you could ever ask for and more. It pained you to know Alex Burgess had to go through a life of misery despite the comforts and riches he was surrounded with.

“The day my father died, I told him that if Randall were alive, he would hate him as much as I did. Those were the last words he heard from me before leaving this world forever.”

He left you speechless, even more so for the depth of his story. He looked absolutely devastated, tears forming at the corners of his eyes.

“I would like to say that I regret what I did, but that would be a lie. I inherited all his possessions, but also the burdens that came with them. There is… one, in particular, which I’ve been trying to get rid of for a very long time now. But if I do, that choice might have serious consequences for me, Paul and anyone else involved.”

Your mind immediatly went to the basement you couldn't dare approaching. Could that be the hidden burden he was so dramatically referring to?

“For the last few years, I’ve been asking myself the same question over and over again; am I just as bad as my father was?”

You considered what he told you, thinking carefully about the proper words to use. It wasn’t an easy question and it had no easy answer either, there just was too much you didn’t know. About him, about his father, about their history, about what he inherited and they were keeping buried in the dark.

In the end, you went with what your heart suggested you to say. “You are only human Sir. We all may say horrible things when we face traumatic experiences, we shouldn't be ashamed of our weaknesses. The words we speak in our worst times do not define us and I think you should really forgive yourself at this point in life”

You watched the man as he stared down at his wrinkly hands, bottom lip quivering and frail shoulders drooping against the wheelchair.

You continued. “As for your burden, I’m sure you will make the right decision. Would the consequences you speak about be worse than what would happen if you left things the way they are now?”

“You have made a good point.” He paused for a moment, then looked up at the sky. “But am I really brave enough to risk it?”

You should have kept yourself as far as possible from his affairs, as you had absolutely nothing to do with whatever they were hiding. And yet, that voice into your head was pushing you to do it, to say it out loud, to force your way through it because you wanted to know. You needed to know. As much as it worried you.

Why though? You couldn't explain it. Just a feeling maybe, a mere gut sensation that you struggled to ignore.

Alas, the words came out on their own accord, before you could even process them. “If there’s anything I can do Sir, anything at all, I may help you out.”

Did you really expect that Mr. Burgess would let you know about his family’s darkest secrets, when you had no right of intruding and no knolewdge of what was going on? Obviously not. But that wasn’t enough to stop you.

He, for his part, said nothing. Didn’t even flinch as he kept his teary eyes glued to the burning sun. You waited, seconds turned to minutes and the awkward silence had become too much to bear.

Defeated, you decided to apologize. “I’m sorry, I overstepped. Please forget what I just said, Mr. Burgess.”

However, you were shocked to hear what he said next. “You would help, would you.”

Wait. Was he actually considering it?

“You know… maybe that’s not such a bad idea. Meet me in the living room tonight at 10 PM. There is something I should be discussing with you.”

Your heart skipped a beat. Whether it was for the excitement, or the fear of biting more than you could chew, you couldn’t really tell. For all you knew they were in fact holding the devil into the basement, which would match with the different rumors you had previously heard. On the other hand, you figured they would never mention it to you if it could potentially put your own life at risk.

Right?

Nevertheless, you accepted his invitation and for the entire day you couldn’t think about anything else, mentally beating yourself up for your impulsive behavior.

That night, you were feeling sick to the core. As soon as you approached the living room space, you heard Mr. Burgess and Mr. McGuire holding an animate conversation. You moved closer, staying hidden behind the curtains just enough to hear what they were whispering about.

“Alex, darling please, be reasonable. She has nothing to do with this.”

“She might be our only chance, Paul. The only way to finally end it all.”

“You’ve been trying to get a word from him for years! What makes you think that it will be different with someone else?”

Him? Who was him?

“He won’t talk to me, we have determined as much. But you saw it yourself in the past few weeks, she is good with people.”

You heard Paul grunting. “Come on Alex, you know he is not people. A pretty face and some sugar-coating words are the last thing he needs.”

“I don’t have too much time left!” There was desperation in Alex’s voice. “I can’t stand the thought of this burden weighting on anyone else’s shoulders. Least of all yours.”

Hence, there was someone held captive into the basement. According to the rumors, a demon was summoned by Roderick Burgess many years before, granting the man wealth and prosperity until the day he died. You didn't know how true such a horrifying theory actually was, but evidently, there was a bit of foundation in the creative stories people liked to come up with.

A part of you wanted to just run back to your room and forget you even offered to assist them in the first place, but what would you hope to accomplish doing so? Nevertheless, your guts once again prompted you to move forward with whatever you were getting yourself into. You were so incredibly close to uncover the mystery that was heavily tickling your strange curiosity and you couldn't let that pass.

Gaining enough courage to leave your hiding spot, you walked through the curtains to announce your arrival. Both men were now facing your way, their expressions two opposite poles.

“Ah, good evening Miss Y/LN,” said Mr. Burgess. “Your timing is impeccable.”

Paul sighed, but he remained silent and greeted you with a nod.

Your fingers nervously grasped the apron tied around your uniform. “Good evening. You said there was something you wanted to discuss with me?”

Mr. Burgess cleared his throat. “There is, yes... but it is better if we show you. Paul?”

You could see Mr. McGuire looking at you with a pained expression, full of guilt and sorrow as he took the wheelchair and guided Alex to the basement door while gesturing you to follow. The guards immediatly stood up straight like two perfectly trained royal soldiers, letting you all in and briefly glancing at you in utter confusion. You ignored them and just walked behind Paul with your head held high, waiting for him to secure the wheelchair into the elevator.

You followed straight, standing at Paul’s right side while the elevator vibrated loudly and started to descend. A metallic sound echoed in the humid and dark cellar the moment it came to a stop.

Your legs felt weak and your feet were hurting after an entire day of work with those shoes. Your heart was beating so fast that you could hear it rumbling in your ears. You struggled for a moment, almost unable to move. You had to force your body to cooperate, stepping out of the elevator and biting your tongue to keep your nervousness at bay.

Paul flipped a big switch on the wall and, from where you were standing, you could see the lights flickering and turning on at the same time. He kept walking, the wheelchair sliding onto a dais that had been constructed between the main floor and the squary platform at che center, surrounded by a pool of dark water. You could spot something now, a big and transparent object chained to the ceiling and floor, remaining upright and suspended in the air.

But when Paul moved the wheelchair aside and allowed you to see the odd sphere in its entirety, your breath got caught in your throat and your legs almost gave out under you again. There was someone looking up and meeting your eyes, curled up into that glass cage like a bird with clipped wings. You saw no horns, no sharp teeth, no claws… there was nothing that could be even remotely similar to the devil people described.

In fact, the being in front of you was absolutely ethereal; pale skin and lean muscles that seemed carved into marble, dark hair falling messily on his forehead, full lips, a strong jawline and a pair of blue eyes containing the entire universe inside. Two deep orbs that seemed to stare right into your soul and shine in the dim light.

You were looking at the most beautiful creature you had ever seen in your entire life.

Who was that man? Why did they strip him of all his clothes? Wasn’t he cold down there, in a room that was at least five degrees cooler than the rest of the house (and had the exposed skin of your arms and legs crawling)?

It was wrong. So very wrong. On so many levels. “What is going on here…?” Your voice cracked.

Mr. Burgess placed his right hand over the glass in front of him, his attention was directed to the imprisoned being, who you couldn't stop looking at. “Miss Y/LN, I present you Dream of the Endless. In 1916, my father summoned him by accident, instead of his sibling Death. He put him into this cage and over the binding circle to seal his power away. He begged him to bring my brother Randall back, demanded riches and immortality… all he received from him was silence, until the day he died.”

You looked at the golden circle under your feet, perfectly dried and well preserved over time. You processed what he just told you and your head started to spin like a top. If he got summoned in 1916, he remained locked up for 106 years, over a century spent into such a tiny space, away from everything he used to know while the world continued changing and advancing in his absense.

But did you even want to believe what Alex was telling you? According to his story, both Alex and Paul would be centenarians and it just didn’t add up.

“My father said we couldn’t free him, that he would come for us to seek revenge. With him gone, I told Dream that I was willing to let him go, as long as he could guarantee that Paul and I would be left unharmed in return. Unfortunately, I’m still waiting for an answer.”

There was something that sounded strangely familiar and was causing you a weird sense of dread. Dream of the Endless…. Dream…. where did you hear that before?

ℌ𝔢 𝔦𝔰 𝔰𝔞𝔦𝔡 𝔱𝔬 𝔰𝔭𝔯𝔦𝔫𝖈𝔩𝔢 𝔰𝔞𝔫𝔡 𝔬𝔯 𝔡𝔲𝔰𝔱 𝔦𝔫𝔱𝔬 𝔱𝔥𝔢 𝔢𝔶𝔢𝔰 𝔬𝔣 𝔠𝔥𝔦𝔩𝔡𝔯𝔢𝔫 𝔞𝔱 𝔫𝔦𝔤𝔥𝔱, 𝔱𝔬 𝔟𝔯𝔦𝔫𝔤 𝔬𝔫 𝔰𝔩𝔢𝔢𝔭 𝔞𝔫𝔡 𝔡𝔯𝔢𝔞𝔪𝔰.

And then it hit you. It was something you read about when you were a child, a tale as old as time that thoroughly enchanted your little self and you had almost forgotten while growing up.

But it couldn't be. It didn't make any sense.

“Wait. Are you telling me that your father summoned the actual Sandman? The Lord of Dreams and Nightmares himself?”

The prisoner moved forward, staring at you with suspicion and surprise mixed together. Somehow you knew it was all true and so incredibly absurd at the same time. He was out of this world, so magical-looking despite his current vulnerability. There was no mistake, it was real. He was real.

“Miss Y/LN, how do you know him...?”

𝔜𝔬𝔲 𝔥𝔞𝔳𝔢 𝔪𝔢𝔱 𝔥𝔦𝔪 𝔟𝔢𝔣𝔬𝔯𝔢 𝔞𝔫𝔡 𝔥𝔢 𝔥𝔞𝔰 𝔪𝔞𝔫𝔶 𝔫𝔞𝔪𝔢𝔰. ℌ𝔢 𝔦𝔰 𝔱𝔥𝔢 𝔎𝔦𝔫𝔤 𝔬𝔣 𝔇𝔯𝔢𝔞𝔪𝔰 𝔞𝔫𝔡 𝔑𝔦𝔤𝔥𝔱𝔪𝔞𝔯𝔢𝔰, 𝔥𝔢 𝔦𝔰 𝔇𝔯𝔢𝔞𝔪 𝔬𝔣 𝔱𝔥𝔢 𝔈𝔫𝔡𝔩𝔢𝔰𝔰.

“I read about him. A very long time ag-” You stopped in your tracks, your eyes widened as realization hit you on the spot. “...Oh my God.”

Slowly, almost tentatively, you moved closer to the entity. He slightly tilted his head at you and inspected your features, every change in your expression, every emotion rippling out of your body.

And then you spoke, revealing what had you so perturbed. “1916. It was the year of the Encephalitis Lethargica, known as the Sleepy Sickness. Those people who never woke up, the famous case of Unity Kinkaid printed on newspapers and books to this day (and even my neverending insomnia, perhaps)... It all took place because of this, because you have the Sandman trapped into this cage since 106 years ago.”

You thought he was just a fairy tale, a bedtime story parents used to tell their kids to ensure they had nice dreams when afraid of the dark, or to warn them about nightmares hunting them if they weren't good enough. But seeing him in the flesh now, having this incredibly beautiful, yet broken being before you, your stomach flipped upside down and your heart raced violently against your ribs.

Your hand came in contact with the glass as well, it was freezing cold and thick under your touch. Dream’s shiny eyes shifted down to look at your palm, then back up to meet your gaze again. Anger, frustration, pain, loneliness… you could see this and so much more, you felt it as if those emotions were your own.

Mr. Burgess cleared his throat. “Well, this burden my father left me is something I really don’t want to keep until the end of my days. He doesn’t talk to me though, he only stares, all the damn time. Just like he’s doing now with you.”

You snorted, irritation taking over you. “With all due respect Sir, he’s been captured and placed into a cage for more than a century, without a shred of clothing on and withheld against his will. The fact he doesn’t want to talk shouldn’t really be surprising to you.”

He let out a pained sigh. "You are right, of course. And very smart too... this is why I need your help."

"And how exactly am I supposed to help?"

You found your rising anger very questionable, considering you literally brought this upon yourself. You could have avoided that awful situation if you had kept your mouth shut and yet, now that you were looking at Dream, regret was not a predominant feeling.

"Talk to him. Convince him. That is all I ask."

You blinked in confusion. "I'm sorry?"

The one concerned was just a few inches away, yet the man spoke as if the Endless couldn’t hear him, nor understand his words at all.

“What makes you think he will even listen to me?”

Mr. Burgess stood from the wheelchair, unstable on his legs, to slowly take your hand in his. “Look, Miss Y/LN, I’m not asking you to do this for free. I will pay you for your service, twice the monthly amount I’m already giving you, in fact.”

What…?

“Think about your father. With a similar amount of money, you wouldn’t need to worry about the costs of modern medicine anymore.”

Your heart cracked and you slowly removed your hand from his weak grasp. “That’s a low blow, Mr. Burgess.”

“She’s right Alex,” Mr. McGuire intervened. “Please dear, just let her be.”

But Alex didn’t want to see reason. He moved closer to the glass sphere for support, pleading you with newly formed tears that threatened to spill. “I’m begging you. Please, just give it a try… I’m too old and tired to continue with this. I assure you that I want him to be free, more than anything else in the world. He knows that.”

He seemed genuinely intent on letting Dream go, but the fear of seeing the action backfiring against him and his husband was preventing him from doing the right thing. How were you supposed to play along, go down into the cellar solely to extort an imprisoned God, even earning money for such a shameful act? He didn’t utter a single word in over a century, was Alex really expecting the Endless to talk to you, a perfect stranger, as you could only chatter nonesense through a barrier magically keeping him stuck and restrained?

When you didn't respond, the man sighed once more. “It’s getting late now and we all need to rest. Come, we will discuss this again later.”

Paul muttered a soft “I’m sorry” when he walked past your frozen form, Alex now back onto the wheelchair, exhausted and disheartened. You stayed there for a moment longer, glancing at the man in the bowl with panic rising inside of you. He continued to look straight at your soul from under his long lashes, silent and unperturbed. You felt captivated, entranced, eager to break the glass and let him out.

But you couldn’t do that, you knew you couldn’t.

So you looked away, lowering your head and turning on your heels, walking fast to reach the elevator. You peaked over your shoulder one last time before going, Dream of the Endless was sitting motionless into the cage, his eyes never leaving you as you went up.

End notes: This chapter is set around three months before Morpheus escapes, in 2022 (again, based on the Netflix show) and we have already reached the second month. In case you are wondering if Reader will set him free, the answer is no. I plan to keep things as canon as possible, so everything will take place as originally scripted (although she may try something eventually).

Also, Reader is human, but she appears to be a very sensitive one. The 'gut thing' she experienced about the basement is in fact a recurrent event in her life.

Go to Chapter 2 ->

Read on AO3

[fashionsfromhistory]

Miniature English Drawing Room of the Late Jacobean Period, 1680-1702

Narcissa Niblack Thorne & Unknown Artisans

c.1937

Art Institute of Chicago (Reference Number: 1941.1189)

[simmearly]

"Rolf" Wall Panels

Now Available On My Patreon - Free Always

These panels are inspired by the Jacobean wall carvings of architectures past.

3 Swatches white/red/brown

Join My Discord Server

Buy Me A Coffee / Support My Work.

Enjoy! xx

[saintsenara]

scylla and charybdis - a snippet

severus snape/lord voldemort explicit | graphic depictions of violence | major character death

here's a little look at what to expect in chapter three of scylla and charybdis. this one's titled shipmates - why? because the seventeen-year-old snape's easter stay with the malfoys has him feeling like he's finally found a group of people he truly belongs with.

i can't imagine that will go wrong.

Malfoy Manor is a magnificent building.

Even Severus, who’d never been the sort of pretentious toff who could be sent to half-mast by the finer points of Jacobean architecture (unlike - he suspected - Lucius), had to admit that. And it only took two days after he arrived to spend the Easter holidays for him to become convinced of the fact.

Of course, it was absurd - mad, really - to think such things about a pureblood’s fancy country pile, when he was supposed to loathe the posh, with their glittering vaults and easy movement through the world but he felt as though it was almost appropriate to describe his surroundings as beautiful. There was a brown-sugar glitter to the stone of the walls and an emerald sparkle -

[‘Look at me.’]

- to the immaculate parkland. There were gardens bursting with the flouncy blooms of silk-pink roses and bedrooms decked out in snow-white satin sheets. He woke up every morning not to frost on the inside of the dirty windows of his parents’ frigid little terrace, a feeble approximation of warmth coughing its way out of a dodgy two-bar heater his dad had acquired from a bloke in a pub - and not to an ominous medievalism, a vast roaring fire in a huge stone grate, doing its best to chase away the dampness of the lake, either - but to a sensible conflagration beneath an elegant marble mantel. When he rose, he could drift down to the airy dining room - the champagne-coloured April light glittering through the French windows - and find his hosts tucking into breakfast, silver platters of bacon and eggs laid enticingly on the sideboard. When the meal was done, and Abraxas slithered off to attend to some vague business in his office, and Lucius went off to meet with creditors and condescend to tenant farmers, he could take himself off to the library and work his way through any book he desired, never having to worry - like he had to constantly at school - that some greasy little do-gooder (Pettigrew, probably; the other Marauders may have been cunts but at least they were cunts with an intolerance for the rules, Pettigrew was just a narc) would be lurking in the stacks to spy on him and run off to tattle to McGonagall about his interest in dark magic.

[‘He has lately taken to listening at doors, I don’t know what he means by it.’]

[‘That, Severus, is why I have sent him to spend the summer with you.’]

When evening came and dinner was done, he could sip a brandy and play chess with Lucius. Like he was a proper man, no matter his accent and his secondhand robes. He seemed to have become sophisticated - that was the way he saw it - just from having been welcomed into the manor through the front door. He seemed to have become correct - to have taken his rightful place in the order of things - just from having been apparated by Lucius directly from Hogsmeade Station on the last day of term, which Avery and Mulciber had been impressed by, to Severus’ malevolent glee He seemed to have shed the grease that Black was so fond of pointing out always clung to him, which only confirmed what he’d always thought - that filth which didn’t really belong there had been laid upon him by his mother’s willingness to forget the dignity of her magic and spend her days hunched over the chip pan, in service of a Muggle brute who was sitting in a string vest in front of It’s A Knockout, fogging up the front room with a haze of cheap ale and putrid sweat.

He’d been rescued. That’s what it felt like. He’d been adopted, whirled out of the grubby mill town he’d had to drag himself around for seventeen years - with its crumbling rows of two-up-two-down houses and its mouse-infested chip shops - and saved. He’d been welcomed - a little late, but Lucius had always struck him as too rich to appreciate how time worked for anyone other than himself - into a world where he was equal in dignity to the thoroughbred blondes who minced around the place in their furs and damasks, and his dad’s woodbines and tennent’s and his mum’s decision to embarrass herself by letting a Muggle drunkard knock her up and knock her about had ceased to matter, and nobody cared that he wore his father’s face and had his father’s name.

For once in his life, he was on the right side of the smug aura which shimmered out through the Malfoys’ mullioned windows. A stranger - the sort of cringing half-blood who came to tug his forelock in the hope of receiving a handout from Abraxas - would think the elegant mask of the house looked like a sneer. To a welcome guest, the snooty haze which enveloped the whole place was a marvellous inside joke.

And he was a welcome guest, no matter what Lily or his mum would have said about these sort of rich purebloods never giving a solitary fuck about people like them, people from the slums and the margins. There was no more standing like a lump on the kitchen threshold and being quickly sent away, lest poverty flake like dust from his clothes and turn the elves into raging trade unionists. He was permitted to sit with Lucius and his father after dinner and chat with Abraxas - who had a keen interest in alchemy and was, he had to be honest, considerably cleverer than his son - like they were members of the same club.

Which, he supposed, they were now. Now that he had met the Dark Lord.

Which he supposed meant that he didn’t need to worry himself about who it was that made his food or cleaned his bedroom or swept the grates.

Or who it was that had threatened the Malfoys into being so nice to him.

[shakespearenews]

https://www.washingtonpost.com/books/2023/08/23/farah-karim-cooper-great-white-bard/

...the Sam Wanamaker Playhouse, as it’s officially known, is sometimes too dark, especially for the actors of color who are increasingly cast in major roles onstage.

“It really places them at a disadvantage because they can’t be seen,” said Farah Karim-Cooper, seated in the playhouse’s pit...

A decade ago, she advised the indoor theater’s design based on Jacobean architectural tradition. But during the Globe’s first Shakespeare and Race Festival, which she organized in 2018, she hosted a workshop in the theater with actors of color and learned how they were disadvantaged by some of the set and lighting design decisions....

-----

...She anchors her claims to current events, bolstering arguments about Shakespeare being hijacked by White nationalists with a reference to a little-known letter sent by American far-right extremists to Washington’s Folger Shakespeare Library ahead of the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection, reassuring the library that the mob had “no intention of damaging, trespassing, or otherwise altering your facility in anyway” during the violent events. 

[venicepearl]

Audley End House is a largely early 17th-century country house outside Saffron Walden, Essex, England. It is a prodigy house, known as one of the finest Jacobean houses in England.

Audley End is now one-third of its original size, but is still large, with much to enjoy in its architectural features and varied collections. The house shares some similarities with Hatfield House, except that it is stone-clad as opposed to brick. It is currently in the stewardship of English Heritage but long remained the family seat of the Barons Braybrooke, heirs to the estate of whom retain a portion of the contents of the house, the estate, and the right to repurchase as an incorporeal hereditament. Audley End railway station is named after the house.

[draculasstrawhat]

I’m not going to reply directly to the post because I suspect it’s derailing, but I don’t think a lot of North Americans understand how fully (and casually) Europeans inhabit their own history. Not just as landscape, but in terms of buildings, institutions, etc. This is not to say that America doesn’t *have* ancient places, or old buildings that are still inhabited, or anything like that - because obviously it does - but the extent to which they are the background of our lives, the very fabric of our towns. They are not just *there* - our lives are still broadly defined by them. This is partly because Europe is so much smaller, and partly because Europeans were - in the main - the colonisers, and when European countries were invaded, the invaders generally adopted the existing fortifications and town structures.

So that post about proximity to a castle? My mother has moved a lot in her life, but she has never lived in a place (town, city, or village) that didn’t have a castle. My town doesn’t have a castle - it has a 15th? century fortified Manor House, and as such the town is broadly considered “architecturally unremarkable” and having “no old buildings of note.” I live in the ‘new town’ of this place, where most of the buildings are coming up on 200 years old.

But it’s not just that. My partner’s old school - not a particularly special or posh school - had been school since the 16th century. It was no longer in the same building, ofc, but the original building was still there. I had university lectures in a big old Haunted Mansion style stately home that had been sold off in the ‘60s - some of the rooms still had the Jacobean panelling. I don’t actually know the history of it, which is unlike me. A town near where I used to live had its parish church in what was essentially 1/3 of the old monastery with the ruins in the churchyard, and new burials among the old ones. Then there are places like Avebury, where the whole village is built inside (and partly of) a Neolithic stone circle. These things are not so much artefacts of history, but living buildings, towns, institutions. It’s not just, “Oh, they’re here, they exist,” but that we interact with them on the daily. I drive down a Roman road to visit my parents, and literally cross Hadrian’s wall. We eat in pubs on old turnpike roads that were once coaching inns and that are named after the families who used to (and in some cases still do) own the land.

And… I don’t live anywhere especially interesting or ‘Historical’. The majority of my life has been lived in houses that were built after 1950, (and those that weren’t were built after 1850) but it is just *everywhere*, all the time.

The States are a wonderful, diverse country with huge amounts of history - both pre colonial, and post - but one of the effects of it being colonised land (and also, just so massive) is that in a lot of places, there is a disconnect from the bones and continuity of history that is very unsettling to people from European countries (and I suspect a lot of the rest of the globe). And while I know there are places there that history layers itself in fascinating and everyday ways… the influence of the era of a lot of American expansion (The alleged ‘Age of Reason’) lingers in planned cities and communities, in a way that has never really taken off over here - mostly because there was a lot of stuff already in the way that the planners could not bulldoze without repercussions the way they could over the Pond.

[fideidefenswhore]

Only the chapel royal at Richmond diverged from the [usual plans], with an elevated closet at the west end. Henry VII built Richmond as the architectural centrepiece of his newly founded dynasty, and unveiled it during festivities that followed the marriage of Prince Arthur to Katherine of Aragon in 1501. The chapel, at 96 feet long and 30 feet wide, was the largest of the Tudor chapels royal. The chapel had passageways at the ground and the first floor levels that connected it to the royal lodgings, rather than closets at the west end, the king's and queen's closets stood above opposite sides of the choir in the east end, thereby placing the preacher directly below the sovereign.

Sermons at Court: Politics and Religion in Elizabethan and Jacobean Preaching