But they strike me as quite unusual nonetheless. We’re having a new roof put on a barn at the moment and I found them inside.
The first is about six inches square:
and the second is about eight inches by six inches:
I’m really not sure what the design is in the centre of the first (is it perhaps a Lotus flower in the centre?). The second looks like it might perhaps be a poppy? Perhaps more unexpected is the swastika motif in the corners of both tiles. My best guess at the moment is that these tiles were made to be used as part of a fire surround, perhaps some time around 1890, and as such they pre-date the association of the symbol with the Nazis. As far as I’m aware, at the time it was better known as a symbol of good fortune that came from religions such as Hinduism. I can’t help wondering if many might have been deliberately destroyed during or after the second World War. Designs using the swastika symbol might have been quite fashionable during the late Victorian era, but how such tiles came to turn up on a small farm in the backwaters of west Somerset is a mystery.