The image of a stacked pile of terracotta pots in an old greenhouse was already enough to make us potty about pots. The non-plastic, and very old kind, that is.
Here’s a favourite hoard at Range Farm in Kent. Mottled, dishevelled mish-mash pots, perched on a cobwebbed bench, quite at home against a crumbling painted wall. That’s raw beauty in our eyes.
But when digging around to write a post about our fascination for all kinds of pots found in farmyards, gardens, potting sheds and old rustic kitchens, I stumbled upon a new fact that has now catapulted this favourite word POTS on to a new plane – POTS is no longer a love affair, it’s now a complete obsession.
Did you know, POTS is the abbreviation for
Pretty Old Tired Stuff
Oh my, Farm Locations and POTS is a match made in heaven. Cupid has struck gold. We offer Pretty Old Tired Stuff in spades. Not just clay pots in the potting shed of a manor house, or jamming pots on the aga of a traditional farm kitchen, but now our POTS extend to an infinite spread of old, untainted features and props found on a farm location, and all left respectfully, to age naturally. None of the plastic intervention needed, our POTS are the prettiest on the eye by far.
To illustrate our point of POTS being a wonderland in the making, we’ve rustled up a few POTS that should well take your own fancy. Can we make a love match for you too? (It’s Valentines week, so we can’t help but be a little mushy).
Now to those wonderful individual features of Pretty Old Tired Stuff
Example No. 1 | The Ancient Barn
Ancient barns are the kingpin of old farms. Typically timber-framed with glorious rooflines, some equally impressive barns are smaller, brick-built and quirkier in shape. Take an old oast house, with round kilns for drying the hops, or a granary on stilts where corn was once stored.
The tithe barn at Tithe Farm, Hampshire is soon to be the film set for a closing sequence of a TV horror drama. The director even fell for an old covered-up car, stored in the corner. It’s the genuine and the subtle which make an untouched location a gem of a find.
Example No. 2 | The Kitchen
Have you recently found an original 1950s, 1960s, 1970s, or even 1980s kitchen? They are a dying breed, the genuine article, with no modernisation in sight. This cottage kitchen at Jolly Farm was the only location for latest Zoopla TV commercial, a showpiece for “Nana’s cottage”
Example No.3 | The Vintage Tractor
Vintage tractors and rickety trailers are an absolute favourite for many a production – classic photoshoots, quirky music videos, pre-wedding engagement soots, period dramas. We’ve many a landowner with a sentimental vintage tractor to offer. Here’s one of a wide collection found at South Farm, inside the M25.
Example No. 4 | Endangered Buildings
Take Millstone Farm, Essex as an example of POTS needing the film industry’s backing. Here you will find one of the last remaining tidal mills found in England and together with the owners, we are on a mission for it to be hired for filming, to help bring the necessary income to preserve it, rather than convert it.
Example No. 5 | Disused Railways
Think viaducts, bridges, redundant lanes and railways – we have a spread of old transport links that are now privately owned, and easy to hire. The railway line at Quarrenden Farm in Sussex is also connected to a museum of a railway station which we can also arrange a hire for.
Example No. 6 | Derelict farmyards
Great Knights Farm, also in Sussex is approached across a field, and the cluster of abandoned farm buildings is a feast for a POTS lover who craves for untouched buildings in a secret location. These derelict farmyards are too swiftly being converted into other commercial uses. Not Great Knights.
Example No. 7 | Castle Ruins
Be inspired by what can be found on Britain’s farms. Burns Castle Estate is one such prize, with two castle ruins to choose from.
Example No. 7 | Corrugated Tin
Wriggly tin is the epitome of POTS in our view. The colours and textures shared by corrugated tin sheds and roofs are a favourite backdrop when looking for a rustic vibe in the country.
Take a look at the barns found at Osney Farm in Sussex. POTS at its very best.
Example No. 8 | The Church
Landowners on England’s farms might even have a church in their possession. Church Farm in Essex does. And Monks Farm also in Essex has an old priory. Hamilton Estate in the Midlands has its own chapel.
All privately owned, disused and yours to be hired.
Example No. 9 | The Greenhouse
From the vegetable patch with its own little cedar greenhouse, through to the Victorian sprawling glasshouses on country estates, these unique buildings are favoured more when ageing gracefully and sprawling with vines. Here’s a glorious example at Edwards Estate in Oxfordshire, new to the portfolio this month.
Example No. 10 | The Flower Pot
For our final example, let’s take POTS back to its literal term and celebrate the divine flower pot that’s been home to a few plants in its lifetime. It’s POTS at its most sublime – “pretty old tired stuff” of dreams.
Couple that with a tired old house and garden, and our love affair just keeps on blossoming. That’s why our final photo of today needs to be back at Jolly Farm. It really is POTS heaven there.
Happy Valentines. Say it with old geraniums and a cracked flower pot.