Our House

Our House was a three bedroom terraced house with a small front garden, just big enough for a privet hedge and a space to cut it from both sides. The hedge was behind a 3 foot high wall and was about five feet high. There were three steps up to the front door of the house and my mother used to scrub these regularly, on hands and knees with a scrubbing brush and bucket of soapy water. The door had a letter box, with a piece of felt at the back to keep out the draughts, a knocker and a bell which had been put in by my father. The wire from the bell push ran along to a very simple type of bell just over the kitchen door.

The front door opened straight into the front room which had a couple of best chairs, a table and a piano. It had an open fireplace and a coal fire which was only lighted on special occasions, mainly Christmas. I became quite used to practising the piano in the freezing cold, only at certain times though so as not to disturb the neighbours. There was a square carpet in the centre of the room with the floorboards around the edge painted black.

The front room had a door leading straight into the middle room. This room also had easy chairs an old sofa, a coal fire which was lit in cold weather. There was also a carpet in the centre of this room. A door led out onto the stairs which twisted up to the bedrooms and another door led to the kitchen. In between the middle room and the kitchen was a cupboard under the stairs where brushes etc. were kept. The kitchen had rugs on a stone floor, a stone sink, gas cooker, cupboards and a small electric water heater. This was the only hot water in the house and many houses did not even have this and had to boil water on the cooker.

Upstairs we had three bedrooms. Mine was the back bedroom and there were another two steps to go up to the landing with the other two bedrooms off it, one at the back and one at the front. In some houses you had to go through one bedroom to get to the next, but ours were separate. We had no bathroom although later on some people converted their small bedroom into a bathroom. We had a bathroom built on the back of the house when I was about 12. The bedrooms had rugs on the floor and black painted floor boards and the landing and stairs had a runner (carpet) in the centre. There was quite a draught came up through the gaps in the floor boards. All the bedrooms had fireplaces, but fires were only lit when anyone was not well and had to stay in bed.

Out the back was an outside toilet and a coal house and we had a shed for storing woodwork and gardening tools. There was a very small yard leading to a small back garden with a patch of grass a few flowers in the borders. We had a large six foot high privet hedge separating our garden from next door on one side and a fence on the other side. The lady this side kept fowls and I used to peep through the gap between her hen houses to see the mice hiding with their babies. We had several tall poplar trees separating our garden from those backing on to ours. There was an entry to six houses, but we were at the end so it did not cross our garden. My Granny’s house was two doors away and her back garden was separated in two by the entry. She also had an air-raid shelter left over from the war and it was nice to play in this. It was covered by earth and had a simple wooden ladder with three rungs to go down inside. The door was only about three feet high and the shelter itself was only about two feet above the ground (and four feet below ground).

We had a tin bath, kept outside, and brought in once a week and put in the middle room in front of the fire. Water was boiled on the gas and poured in till it was one or two inches deep and that was how we had baths.

Our Back Garden in the Snow

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