How it is made

The sound

Nothing on this site is a recording. When you press play, your browser starts making noise, in the plain sense of the word: white, pink and brown noise, the raw material of every hiss, hush and rumble. Filters shape it into rain, wind and the roar of a fire. Hundreds of tiny, random bursts become crackle and drops on glass. A closing filter turns a low rumble into thunder that dies away over the hills.

Because it is made as it plays, it has no last second. A recording has to end and start again, and sooner or later your ear finds the join. Here there is no join to find. It also means there is nothing to download, so the page stays small and starts at once.

Made sound has limits, and you should know them. The rain, wind, fire and noise are convincing. The train is a good impression. The voices in the bar are only an impression. Over time, recorded and designed sound for each place will replace the layers that deserve better.

The place

The sounds are set in Wychwold, a county that does not exist, somewhere inside the real Britain of the 1930s to the 1950s. It has a village called Hollowmere, an inn called The Kettle & Rain, a single-track railway and a station cat. You can read about the places on the line.

The window on the home page is the inn’s. It follows the real time of day in Britain, so it is dark there when it is dark here, and it shows whatever weather you have set on the mixer.

The pictures

Wychwold is painted, not photographed, and its own paintings are still being made. Until they are finished, the site hangs public-domain British paintings that the look grew from. None of them is a picture of Hollowmere, and each is credited where it appears:

• A Wet Moon, Putney Road, John Atkinson Grimshaw, 1886. Public domain. From Wikimedia Commons.
• Boar Lane, Leeds, by Lamplight, John Atkinson Grimshaw, 1881. Public domain. From Wikimedia Commons.
• Lights in Whitby Harbour, John Atkinson Grimshaw. Public domain. From Wikimedia Commons.
• Roundhay Lake, John Atkinson Grimshaw, 1893. Public domain. From Wikimedia Commons.
• Cottage Garden, Helen Allingham, 1894. Public domain. From Wikimedia Commons.
• Seascape Study with Rain Cloud, John Constable, 1824 to 1828. Public domain. From Wikimedia Commons.
• Rain, Steam and Speed, J. M. W. Turner, 1844. Public domain. From Wikimedia Commons.

The window itself is drawn in code, in flat poster colours, as a stand-in for the painted scenes to come. The sleeping cat and the robin are Bramble and Pip, our own mark.

Who makes it

British Cosy Hours is made by Buildmore. We use AI tools in building the site, and we say so. A channel of long films set in the same places is on its way.

To get in touch, write to hello@cosyhours.store. To put your name over the door for a month, see Sponsor an hour.