The thought undoubtedly going through your mind will be 'but why would they want to change anything?'. The fireplace shown here has now been removed and we hope to have a wood burning stove installed next week. A big one, as apparently it can get chilly up here of a winter night. We took the fireplace out hoping to discover the traditional Dales stone jambs and lintel behind, but were confronted instead with a rather depressing black sooty rubble-filled mess. Glorious. The cat you see here is TomTom, whom we have inherited with the house. He and Dragon are tolerating eachother, and he has become remarkably tame for a field cat. Snoozing on the bed as I write in fact. As you see, the carpets are beautiful; in every room we removed between 3 and 6 layers of carpet, rug and lino-type floor covering, most of which has lain untouched for the last 40 years. Not lovely. The oven is also ours to keep, although we hope one day to have a new one! The staircase is really very lovely - it was apparently stolen (reclaimed) from Streatlam Castle (one of the Queen Mum's family homes) when it was demolished.