22nd March 2025
’Chattel houses’ are quintessentially Bajan. You see them everywhere on the island. Usually modest in size, they’re made of wood, and rest on stone or concrete footings. They can be transported from place to place. Brings a whole new meaning to ‘moving home’. This mobility has more in common with furniture and household contents than conventional buildings, hence ‘chattel’. Clever, eh?
We’re fortunate enough to have toilet facilities in our grounds next to the pool, purpose built for hosting events at Pollards Mill. This wooden structure resting on concrete is known as ‘the pool chattel’. It needed a lot of TLC. Structurally sound, it had a broken window, badly corroded taps and other metal fittings, stained sanitaryware, broken toilet seats, several leaks in the plumbing and some rotted timbers on the steps and exterior handrails. Oh – and a couple of birds’ nests and a general level of grime consistent with not having been cleaned or decorated for several years.
One of our VIPs made a brilliant start on the building in January – see ‘The bar is open’ from 25.1.25) and March has seen us build a good head of steam on this project. After a couple of false starts with unreliable plumbers we struck gold with true gentleman Stephen, who has worked wonders on angle valves, flexlines and several other watery challenges including hacking out a bamboo root which was quenching its thirst on a stopcock:
Meanwhile ace carpenter Bernard made short work of the rotten wood, and Pedro the glazer fixed our window in a jiffy. The real stars, however, were our amazing friends Sarah and Chris. During a visit from the UK lasting less than a week, they refused to hit the beach and insisted on leading a big cleanup and redecoration effort:
We gave full rein to our artistic talents by paying homage to Michelangelo’s Renaissance masterpiece ‘The Creation of Adam’ on the ceiling, with the minor addition of a cleaning sponge:
Like the Eternal City, this chattel wasn’t built in a day. Restoration work by highly specialist conservators (us two!) continues. We’ve added a couple more artistic touches:
Yesterday we smashed the rest of the painting 💪 🥵 but we still have to fit five new toilet seats and door handles, Ronseal the new exterior wood (correction – Nicola’s just done that!), and finish off with a new circuit board from Curtis the sparky. Then we’ll be ready for our first bride and groom later in the year, so that they and their guests can answer the call of nature in comfort. Just as long as none of them wants to take the facility home with them. This is one chattel that’s staying firmly put.
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