Every journey has a story behind it
The house
Moor Hill began life over a century ago as Park Corner Farm. Sadly, the original deeds have been lost but from information gleaned on-line, the farm covered around 76 acres some 130 years ago. It seems the house stopped functioning as a farm in the early 1900s. The dairy and stables were sold off and the modest farmhouse was converted into a substantial gentleman’s residence with extensions added on either side, a relocated main staircase and separate servants’ stairs. Remarkably, the original servant’s bells still work in many of the rooms—even in the bathroom!
By 1945 it was known simply as Park Corner with seven acres of land and beautiful terraced gardens which have unfortunately been lost over time.
Over the years bits of land have been sold off to build neighbouring houses and the property now sits on three-quarters of an acre. I discovered through a ‘for sale’ notice on Ancestry that in 1945 Mr Charles Phillip Lloyd Godsal sold Park Corner for £6,000. In 1939, he lived there with his mother, a cook, and a gardener.
The house retains many original features - beautiful oak doors, an oak staircase and a butler’s pantry—where the butler would have decanted the port. This still has its original Villeroy & Boch stone sink (now hidden beneath a cover). A visit to the archives in Brighton is on the list to learn more, but for now, this history gives a lovely glimpse into the house’s rich past.
My story
I was born into an Indian family in the early 60s. My father had come here in 1955 and my mother in 1960 and they settled in the Midlands in what became a large tightly knit Indian community.
In the early days, my father an overly generous man would welcome newly arrived friends and family to stay in our house whilst they settled and looked for jobs and homes of their own. I grew up in a house where people were always passing through, sometimes single men sometimes families. My mother, whilst going on to have three more children looked after everyone. She describes those early days as drudgery where she would clean and set coal fires in all the rooms, washed everyone's clothes and sheets - all done by hand in those days – and was constantly cooking food with a few beatings thrown in.
As a sensitive child , recently diagnosed with ADHD, I often felt frightened, unseen, and overwhelmed. There was a lot of noise and tension in the house with nowhere to hide. We lived in an Indian bubble in Britain and our friends were other Indian families. I didn't speak English until I started primary school at five. I quickly learnt to read and discovered the local library and life changed.
Books became my refuge—quiet companions in a chaotic world—and the local library became a lifeline that offered escape, wonder and a hint of who I might become. I was an avid reader and I would toddle off to the library on a Saturday morning with my knitted bag and six books to renew which I had usually read by the end of the weekend. It was a beautiful escapism and even now I will "comfort read," children's books and I can still feel the feelings that I felt when I first read them.
By the age of 11 I was caring for three younger siblings and with that my own childhood ended. That early conditioning/programming — that my needs didn’t matter and that my role was to serve others—followed me well into adult life until I entered therapy seven years ago. Secondary school wasn't fun and I managed to scrape into polytechnic with my terrible grades. My father insisted his girls went into further education and even allowed us to study away from home. Quite incredible for girls of first generation immigrants.
The mid 80s took me to Japan. Those were the best two years of my life - full of freedom, fun and adventure. Also a time when Japan was opening up and it was an incredible time to be there. I came back to a wonderful Japan related job in London and managed to somehow avoid an arranged marriage. I met my husband in the late 80s and we were married in 1991. My parents were amazing and after the initial upset loved him and the children though they could never communicate with them fully.
In 2006 I I realised I needed a creative outlet whilst raising my three children and I took up knitting, crochet, plant dying and other crafts. I started a blog to share ideas and to provide inspiration and though I stopped posting in 2008 it has garnered almost 1.3 million views to date.
Beneath the surface ...........
Life changed after the birth of my first child with a difficult birth and postnatal depression, which was only diagnosed after 18 months. By then the damage was done. At this point I made the decision to stay at home and raise my children and I put everything into being the mother that I never had. My life seemed good on the surface, but there was a deep sense of unease and unhappiness inside.
I knew I had had a difficult childhood and that I carried a lot of trauma and baggage. Over the years I read a lot of self development books and I tried alternative therapies but it wasn't until my mother, who I had had a difficult relationship with, died in 2018 and my youngest left home for university that everything came crashing down around me.
Entering therapy was one of the best gifts I gave myself. It has been a long and fulfilling journey in which I delved into my past and gave back to my parents, community and the culture, that I was raised in, everything that did not resonate with me. Then came, as James Hollis says in The Middle Passage, the going inwards into my dark night of the soul to bring up the real me. The true me, the one that was always there under the layers of conditioning and programming.
Currently, I am amicably divorced. Over the last few years I have trained as a coach where I support people with day-to-day struggles and emotional disregulation. I help people to understand where their patterns come from and how they can change things. I use a mixture of training and my very lived experience of over six decades.
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Now I hold space for you
Threads of Renewal is my website where I will share retreats and workshops that I host in my gorgeous home. It's a place where you will find information about the coaching I offer and there is a blog where I share things that I have learned over the years that I feel may be useful to others - everything from self development, health, food, spirituality and more.
I hope that the journey I have been on and the person that I have become, will be an inspiration to many. I have literally and metaphorically unraveled my past bit by bit and I have re-woven my glorious and exciting present and future.
Let's weave the next phase of your journey together
