Sunday 24 September 2023

24 September - Savannah

 It’s a Sunday so there was free parking at the Visitor's centre 😊

We opted for a horse and carriage ride around the streets. It was a lovely way to see Savannah, slowly with lots of time to look at the views and take pics. The driver was a young lad who had endless puns, so we had lots of laughs. We went through some different areas of the city from the trolley bus, so that was nice.








After the carriage ride, we found a lovely café for lunch and we were thankful for the aircon! Steve tried a breakfast casserole, which was kind of like a meatloafy thing. Ros had smoked salmon.




We then headed off through the leafy street to the Sorrel-Weed house for a tour. The tour was really interesting and covered the history of the home through the Sorrel and Weed families until it was purchased in the 1940s by a family that gutted the basement and extended it, and ran a department store from the site until the 1990s. The house was then bought for restoration, and they found that in gutting the basement the load-bearing walls were removed. The poor house had been gradually sagging in the middle and needed much propping up. The main reception rooms had the ceilings lowered but fortunately, all the old ceiling roses and mouldings were left in place and many of the fixtures were discovered in the attics. The basement and first floor have been restored, but the upper floors were too badly modernised to be helped. None of the doors in the house close because of the sag in the floors, but the beautiful old bones are still there. One of the Sorrel family was a doctor and back in the day one of the basement rooms was his operating theatre where he treated injured soldiers and even did a couple of C-sections.








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