# Read the first page of At Home by Bill Bryson Read the opening of At Home by Bill Bryson free, no signup. A room by room history of domestic life, invention, comfort, danger, and ordinary objects. - Page: https://uncovered.ink/read/at-home-bill-bryson - Genre: Social history - Year: 2010 - ISBN: 9781409095545 - Read it blind (cover and title hidden): https://uncovered.ink/?b=9781409095545&s=read-page - Buy: https://bookshop.org/a/125786/9781409095545 - Borrow: https://search.worldcat.org/search?q=9781409095545 ## The opening @@CHAP@@ Introduction SOME TIME AFTER we moved into a former Church of England rectory in a village of tranquil anonymity in Norfolk, I had occasion to go up into the attic to look for the source of a slow but mysterious drip. As there are no stairs to the attic in our house, the process involved a tall stepladder and much unseemly wriggling through a ceiling hatch, which was why I had not been up there before (or have returned with any enthusiasm since). When I did finally flop into the dusty gloom and clambered to my feet, I was surprised to find a secret door, not visible from anywhere outside the house, in an external wall. The door opened easily and led out on to a tiny rooftop space, not much larger than a tabletop, between the front and back gables of the house. Victorian houses are often a collection of architectural bewilderments, but this one was starkly unfathomable: why an architect had troubled to put in a door to a space so lacking in evident need or purpose was beyond explanation, but it did have the magical and unexpected effect of providing the most wonderful view. It is always quietly thrilling to find yourself looking at a world you know well but have never seen from such an angle before. I was perhaps fifty feet above the ground, which in mid-Norfolk more or less guarantees a panorama. Immediately in front of me was the ancient flint church to which our house was once an adjunct. Beyond, down a slight incline and slightly separate from church and rectory, was the village to which both belonged. In the distance in the other direction was Wymondham Abbey, a heap of medieval splendour commanding the southern skyline. In a field in the middle distance a tractor rumbled and drew straight lines in the soil. All else in every direction was quiet, agreeable, timeless English countryside. What gave all this a certain immediacy was that just the day before I had walked across a good part of this view with a friend named Brian Ayers. Brian had just retired as the county archaeologist, and may know more about the history and landscape of Norfolk than anyone alive. He had never been to our village church, and was eager to have a look. It is a handsome and ancient building, older than Notre Dame in Paris and about the same vintage as Chartres and Salisbury cathedrals. But Norfolk is full of medieval churches – it has 659 of them, more per square mile than anywhere else in the world – so any one is easily overlooked. ‘Have you ever noticed,’ Brian asked as we stepped into the churchyard, ‘how country churches nearly always seem to be sinking into the ground?’ He pointed out how this one stood in a slight depression, like a weight placed on a cushion. The church foundations were about three feet below the churchyard around it. ‘Do you know why that is?’ I allowed, as I often do when following Brian around, that I had no idea. ‘Well, it isn’t because the church is sinking,’ Brian said, smiling. ‘It’s because the churchyard has risen. How many people do you suppose are buried here?’ I glanced appraisingly at the gravestones and said, ‘I don’t know. Eighty? A hundred?’ ‘I think that’s probably a bit of an underestimate,’ Brian replied with an air of kindly equanimity. ‘Think about it. A country parish like this has an average of 250 people in it, which translates into roughly a thousand adult deaths per century, plus a few thousand more poor souls that didn’t make it to maturity. Multiply that by the number of centuries that the church has been there and you can see that what you have here is not eighty or a hundred burials, but probably something more in the order of, say, twenty thousand.’ ## Books with a similar feel - [1968 by Mark Kurlansky](https://uncovered.ink/read/1968-mark-kurlansky.md) - [Social Intelligence by Daniel Goleman](https://uncovered.ink/read/social-intelligence-daniel-goleman.md) - [Guns, Germs, and Steel by Jared Diamond](https://uncovered.ink/read/guns-germs-and-steel-jared-diamond.md) - [The Murder of King Tut by James Patterson & Martin Dugard](https://uncovered.ink/read/the-murder-of-king-tut-james-patterson-and-martin-dugard.md) - [Children of Ash and Elm by Neil Price](https://uncovered.ink/read/children-of-ash-and-elm-neil-price.md) - [The Design of Everyday Things by Don Norman](https://uncovered.ink/read/the-design-of-everyday-things-don-norman.md) --- Source: Uncovered (https://uncovered.ink). A short sample shown for reading and discovery. Rights holders can request removal at https://uncovered.ink/takedown.