I'm sitting in Our Cafe right now. Not that we own a cafe, but that's the name of the cafe next to the bookstore above which we live - Our Cafe. We're lucky it's right next door and sometimes I can change the setting when I'm writing because I get so engrossed in the story that I write, draw, take notes and research for hours, just like today (March 10th).

I was writing the fourth chapter and it looked very promising. I have 300 words until the end of the daily challenge and maybe 500 until the end of the chapter when I needed to stop writing and start drawing the floor plan of Aunt Victoria's house. This house is not imaginary. When I write about it, I think about the real house in which we had the opportunity to live for a few days when we took a trip to London together for our 5th wedding anniversary, five years after our honeymoon in London.

It's an old Gothic mansion called Rockmount, and I turned into an internet sleuth this afternoon because I didn't stop at just looking for photos and architectural floor plans, I got much further. I knew that the current owners bought the villa seven years ago, when it was for sale for a very long time and no one wanted to hang such a 650 m2 "shack" around their neck and invest a lot of money in it. The owner who bought it is an investment real estate broker, so he knew how to buy this location correctly. It currently has guest accommodation in turrets in the attic, in which we were accommodated in the basement of the villa where the servants once lived, they rent the apartment of a nice lady with cats (white and black, exactly like ours). But who is behind the creation of this magnificent building?

Mr. Hexagon Sextus Dyball

Located in Upper Norwood on Church Road, Rockmount is one of the finest suburban villas and this pointed Victorian property dates back to 1873. It was designed by eccentric local architect and rebel Scottish style maverick, Mr Hexagon Sextus Dyball. Precisely because of these incredible facts, I couldn't do it and had to search further. He got the name Hexagon at his baptism.

He was no blind follower of fashion. In fact, he put into his designs everything that caught his eye or just occurred to him and it worked. Mr. Sextus Dyball was perceived as a freak, who designs real estate for people fascinated by ugliness and sinister mercy and subscribes to an aesthetic system that, although not far from us, appears chronologically, but seems inscrutably distant, like a remnant of an alien civilization. This is what Jonathan Meades said about him in the article: Five Great Architects You've Never Heard Of. In addition to this villa, he designed many other buildings in the area, highly inspired by the dark Gothic, and to this day most of them are said to be haunted. And it's no wonder that people think of Rockmount itself as a house from the Salem curse rather than a building from the surrounding area.

Haunted Rockmount

• In the 19th century, Rockmount was considered the second most beautiful building in the Crystal Palace area, after the Crystal Palace in the Park, which no longer stands today.

For many years in the villa, the owners kept the original style with crystal chandeliers and original wood paneling on the walls. There are many ways to use the empty space in the attic, but the penultimate owner came up with the mysterious, otherworldly idea of building his three sons their own spaceship in one attic room. This is also what the real estate agent lured her potential buyers to when she was trying to sell a three million dollar property with 11 bedrooms. In addition to the usual bedrooms and reception rooms, the house has a sitting room, a music room, a games room, a study, a wardrobe and a wine cellar. There is also a cottage on the huge plot of land with a room on the first floor, a living room and a fireplace, and if this garden house didn't lack a toilet and a kitchenette, it would be suitable for a family, not just for leisure. It is a listed building and, despite its gloomy appearance, it brings joy to the sight, it is the jewel of this street and area, the footsteps of tourists and various walks end here, so that people can admire the special uniqueness of this house.

In addition to all these facts, I also came across the genealogy of Mr. Hexagon Sextus Dyball's family. It is possible to trace his family tree several generations back, at least to the middle of the eighteenth century. If you are interested in what was written in their family chronicle, as well as how many children Sextus had and what his son graduated from, write to me in the comments and I will prepare another post about this interesting Scotsman.

The project is in the Slovak language, so please use the translation icon in the top right bar of your Google Chrome browser for the moment.