Archived report · 4 min read · Set in Marchmont House ·
Minutes of the Hot Water Committee of Marchmont House
The subcommittee's minutes fix the winter hours of the house urn, and the attendance line has carried a fifth presence since the first minute that nobody can produce an appointment for.
- filed: "at the tea interval"
- reference: "MH/HW/07"
1. These minutes transcribe the committee book of the Marchmont House Hot Water Subcommittee, kept at the estate office and filed here at the tea interval, that being the interval at which the subcommittee has always chosen to meet.
2. The subcommittee was appointed in the autumn of 1977 to consider the hours of the urn, its drawing times, and the care of its flue. It has minuted four sessions in every year since, the urn coming round again each winter as it does.
3. The appointment minute of 14 November 1977 reads, in the original hand, that a subcommittee is appointed, five members to serve, against the winter hours of the urn. Four names follow the minute: Mrs. Vera Lindop, Mr. Brian Sturgess, Miss Doris Craven, and Mr. Walter Pentlow. There the minute stops. A fifth member is minuted to serve; four members are minuted by name.
4. The attendance line of the first session gives the four names above and one office only, the Chair, entered from the first minute of the first session and entered so at every session since. The office is written with a capital letter and no name.
5. The same first minute defers the election of a chair to the following session. No following session has held the election, and the word election does not occur again anywhere in the book. Every motion in the book is carried on the Chair's assent or by consent of the Chair. Nobody appointed the Chair, in the sense that nobody has ever signed an instrument of appointment, and that is the only sense the book keeps.
6. The estate office ledger for 1977 was called for and produced. It carries the four names, and beneath them a fifth line ruled in the same original hand and left empty. The minute book has now been written above that empty line for ten years.
7. The Chair's part in the minutes has body to it. The Chair opens each session, assents to each item in turn, and closes each session. At the spring session of 1981 Miss Doris Craven raised the question of who appointed the Chair. The minute of that exchange reads, entire: the question of the Chair's appointment was minuted. It was not answered then, it has not been answered since, and it has been carried forward on the agenda at every session.
8. The subcommittee's proper business has meanwhile been kept in good order. The urn's hours were fixed at the second session: lit at six forty of a morning, drawn at the midday and the evening intervals, banked at ten of the night, and not lit between three and the half hour's end, the house keeping that interval dark under the standing instruction.
9. Each winter the hours are re-adopted without amendment, on the Chair's assent. The motions show movers and seconders throughout the book. The Chair's own items, of which there are three at every session, show neither mover nor seconder, and pass without discussion and at speed.
10. Votes are taken by show of hands, minuted with the counts. Twice the teller's count has exceeded the number of persons the attendance line accounts for, by one each time. The larger count is the count that stands, and the teller recorded no second line under either.
11. The Chair signs nothing. The minute book is signed page by page by Mrs. Vera Lindop alone. Where the Chair's signature belongs on the first page, the paper carries the dent of a nib that never reached it. The dent is deep enough to have marked the leaf below, and there is no ink in any of it.
12. The latest session was held at the tea interval of this quarter and closed at five minutes past. The Chair is entered present at the opening and present again at the closing. The minute between runs to one word, interval, and the space after that word has always been left blank.
13. For the committee index, the Archive has entered the subcommittee with five members, as minuted. The Chair could not be given a line of its own, having no name to file it under, and the line waits ruled, as the ledger's does.
14. The next session stands for the tea interval in March. It will be opened by the Chair, minuted by the estate office, and carried forward with the question of 1981, which remains the only item this book has never once closed: who appointed the Chair, and under what hand.