Door Story

It must have been about 1965.

I was living in Finchley, N.London with my first wife, who was intolerant of art which did not make money, and the people I was involved with at the time who were a loose association of poets, painters and the like, known as GROUP H. There were some now quite well known names involved but at the time the work we exhibited was decidedly experimental. I had been doing some assemblages and reliefs covered in gold foil, mostly with ‘punny’ titles, and was looking for an idea for a larger work in this vein for submission to a major competition.

Then on my way home from my office job, I saw it. On a corner a few hundred yards from our flat was a large old house being demolished and its magnificent front door beckoned me. Two leaded stained glass panels with missing bits, an ornate knocker, suitably distressed door furniture and letter box, blistered and flaking paint, every detail would be captured by the foil, things inserted in the missing glass bits, it would be yes!! ‘Door d’Or’.

The next day I had a word with the gaffer on the demolition. “All roight, gis a foiver”. OK says I but was secretly aghast, that was a weeks rent.

After dark I strolled nonchalently back carrying a large screw-driver and heavy hammer. The hinges were a bastard, I got half the screws out but had to throw stealth to the winds and cold chisel the hinges apart to finally free the door from its servitude. As it came free I realised for the first time its enormous weight and size. This was a big door. The only way to remove it was to take it on my back, hands on the edges. I staggered down the front steps and took a rest after a few more, nearly to the front gate. Off again and the rust of ages cascaded down my neck as the knocker came loose and rapped me behind the ear at which point I might have sodded this for a game of soldiers but I was obviously myself momentarily unhinged by the rap. After a half a dozen more slow staggers and rests the knocker in the neck became intolerable so I moved cautiously around the door and set off other side down. At every step the knocker tapped and the bolts holding on the letter box bored into my kidneys. There were fortunately not many people about.

Eventually I made it to the hallway and staircase to my first floor flat. I needed help. It was not forthcoming. ‘You Are Not Bringing That In Here’. A friend had a garage behind the block so the door took refuge there until the weekend, but he didn’t really want it to stay there for very long, so I had to sneak it up the stairs through our flat and onto the balcony to where, because they were seen as an affront to hygiene and decency, my art work and materials were exiled. It stood there for some weeks, in full view and blocking half the daylight until the landlord’s objections were added.

I needed to find somewhere I could work on it and where its presence would not offend these phillistines. Above the flat was a large roofspace accessible through a trap which was just big enough to admit the door diagonally if I took off the edge beading of the trap.

I borrowed a ladder and rigged up a rudimentary pully system with climbing rope, slings and karabiners and after a lot of jiggery pokery managed to get the door lined up through the trap, me in the loft and the ladder somehow now lying in the hall below at which point I stuck, there not being enough headroom to clear the bottom of the door through the trap. So I had to untie and retie the ropes and manhandle the door to lift it vertically through the last foot. At last it stood across the joists and leaning against the inner slope of the roof.

Great, get some light up here and a few boards to walk on and I could work here quite well, but meanwhile the door would be better off lying down in the middle of the space. I backed along the joists dragging the door when it caught on an overhead beam. Lowering it and pulling it onward put me off balance. The weight of the door took over and I fell beneath it, between two joists. You could say that it gave me a bit of a slap on the way, as it thrust me through the ceiling in a welter of plaster and filth into my wife’s immaculate sitting room just seconds after she had returned home and was in the middle of demanding explanations.

‘Look At My New Settee’ she shrieked, I couldn’t do much else, I was lying on it. (Thank you new settee!)

After I had replastered the ceiling and mended the trap surround I went off the idea of the Door d’Or.

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