iron skeleton · ward lock · two bolts also · the keeper
the lock is a ward, late nineteenth century, set into a plank door at the foot of the back stair. the lock alone would not hold the door; the cellar is also bolted, top and bottom, with two iron bolts thrown from inside the kitchen, into iron staples set into the jamb. anyone going down does all three.
the key is the longest in the house — long enough that it cannot fit flat in a drawer, and so lives in the open, on its own peg above the kitchen dresser. the peg is the third along; the second and fourth are empty by tradition. the keeper does not say why, only that the keys breathe better with a space on each side.
the cellar holds: two barrels of apple, three of beet, the orchard's last cider in a stoneware flagon, a coil of garden rope, and the stone they brought up out of the field in 1968 and have not known what to do with since. the cellar is opened on the first day each month and otherwise as needed.
field-note — the key is cold even on a warm day, because the cellar is also cold, and the key has been near it longer than near anything else.
key museum · front door · attic key · basement · kitchen