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| Dad, me, and Mum in front of the entrance steps. Our 'front door' was at the side, well out of sight of the road |
I have written about my
childhood before, but have said little about our living conditions. To situate
this in time and place, I am writing (talking?) about the late 1940s and early
1950s in St Leonards–on–Sea, in East Sussex – in Pevensey Road, to be precise.
We lived in the basement flat of a four–storey semi–detached house, built, I
would imagine, between the wars (1st and 2nd, for as long as that will make
sense to people). And I further imagine that we were living in what had been
the servants’ quarters. And yet, can that have been true? It seems
questionable, because each floor was a self–contained flat, with a very public
and utilitarian staircase running up the centre. But perhaps each of the flats
was served by the same servants. Certainly the coal was delivered – by
horse–drawn lorries – to our capacious cellar; and so was presumably carried up
to the other flats (we bought it by the sack load, and the work must have been
as back–breaking for the men as the old metal dustbins). However, we did not supply the other flats, and
I presume that they used electric fires (with one, two, three, or four bars).
Our flat was surrounded
by an ‘area’ which took the form of what might be described as a trench, with
concrete walls and base – about four feet deep and three feet wide. So that
when you looked out of the sitting room windows at the back, your eyes were not
far short of being on a level with the lawn. Quite why the house was built like
this I do not know, but it had one great disadvantage: we were flooded beneath
the floorboards after heavy rainfall – which in turn forced slugs to take
refuge through the cracks. . .
We had only one bedroom,
and when I was too old for my cot, I had a bed in a corner of the sitting room
– which also served as our dining room. Neither I nor anyone else thought there
was anything strange in this arrangement: we did what we could in the space
that was available.
Our kitchen was not very
inviting. As I remember, it had pale green distempered walls and brown floor
lino (I do not think any other colour was available at the time). Probably we
had a larder, but I cannot remember. We did not have a fridge, and so shopped
most days of the week. The pipes were of course lead, and seemed to favour the
kitchen as a place to burst in the winter. We had a gas cooker, and my mother
quite often used a pressure cooker, until one day it blew up and splattered its
contents onto the ceiling.
Our bathroom was even
less inviting than the kitchen. There were no niceties: just a gas boiler
(geyser), a galvanised tub, a mangle, and a clothes horse. Washing machines and
tumble driers were unknown to us; so my mother had to use the galvanised tub
(which also served as our bath), and washing tongs to ‘agitate’ the dirt out of
the laundry, by a kind of gentle pummelling – up and down in the water. Then:
through the mangle, and onto the clothes horse; this was then hoisted up to the
ceiling. Or if the weather was fine the washing was pegged out in the garden
(and alas, it never gave any of that extraordinary aesthetic pleasure so often
to be derived from Italian washing lines. Our washing hung and flapped dully,
and that was it).
Our toilet was one of
the old fashioned chain–pull types, and quite efficient given that the tank was
very high up, so giving a full flush. I used to give the chain three gentle
pulls before the full pull – one of those odd, slightly superstitious things
that kids tend to do.
One, quite small, room
was given over to my father’s workshop (metalwork), in which there was a lathe,
a drilling machine, and a grinder (as illustrated in the photo). Before that,
he had rented a workshop in Hastings. He was a very fine engineer, and could
make components that were accurate to within a tenth of a thousandth of an
inch. (A book he wrote about screw cutting in the lathe has never been out of
print since he wrote it thirty years ago, and an invention of his – the
swing–clear boring tool holder –which is still made and used today). He also
made a model cable car, which travelled from skirting board to ceiling in our
sitting room. Such was the nature of our home!
(I should say that my
father was an unruly youth. In one photo he looks as if he’s been pulled though
that proverbial hedge and wears a scruffy pullover that might well have been a
cast–off of Dennis the Menace’s. He was nevertheless very knowledgeable about
chemistry – as also maths and physics – and took delight one day in placing an
explosive cocktail in some local dustbins, which caused a terrific din and blew
the bin lids sky high!)
We had a garden the size
of a small allotment, and we also had
an allotment. It seems we were still ‘digging for Britain’! I remember the
pleasure of lifting potatoes – and took particular delight in a crescent border
of double daisies and white alyssum, which I think we grew from seed: I see it
in my mind’s eye to this day, and remember the heavenly sweet scent of the
alyssum. I am so glad that there were no mobiles around – no ‘must haves.’ I
would have liked a Hornby 00 railway set, but I knew we could not afford it,
and never even considered pressing my parents to buy one. (Small tragedy: we
had a green and yellow budgerigar called Gussy. One morning, as I was putting
some millet into his cage, he escaped – straight out of the open window. I was
heartbroken.)
We had a dog – a
pedigree Scottish terrier – which we bought from kennels at Hadlow Down (just
north of Lewes, Sussex). We were shown four puppies. All abounded with life,
but one struck us as being particularly spirited, and so it was that ‘Angus’
came into our life. It is good for children to have a relationship with an
animal, yet city life, working parents, and a too–early obsession – as only too
often it is – with social media, make it increasingly difficult to give pets
the attention they need and deserve. But my mother had no need to work, and so
it was that Angus was never alone. My mother and I both took him out – and how
excited he became when his lead was taken off the hook! Taking him for a walk
was good exercise for both canine and human, and I never remember thinking of it
as a chore. Of all the animals, dogs seem the closest to sharing human
emotions. The cat is a cool animal, and goldfish seem hardly aware of their
existence. But with a dog you can form a bond, and I remember years later, when
I was a student and therefore away for weeks on end, that on my visits home
Angus would become so excited that he would make himself sneeze – ‘schnuffing’
we would call it. However, we put him in kennels once – so that we could go on
holiday. When we left his tail was between his legs, but on our return, he came
forward briefly to greet us, and then immediately turned back. Quite clearly he
had been enjoying the company of other dogs. To this day I remember my feeling
of disappointment!
I was well occupied with play and exploration of my
surroundings. Which latter consisted of the seaside, cliffs, woods, the complex
system of twittens (paths between houses), parks, allotments, and the
ubiquitous bomb sites. This is not to say that my mother exercised no control
over me, but she certainly realised that life for me would have been a misery
cooped up in the house week after week (and neither did she spend time
anxiously awaiting my return). My friends and I climbed trees to as far as we
could get . . . but I do not remember anything reckless in this activity: we
were exploring the limits of what was possible – learning about our bodies and
the physical environment. (Tom Sawyer was one of my favourite books, and I read
it twice.) I spent a lot of time with my mother: shopping: for food, firelighters,
and general household goods. This was rich time. I remember when my pocket
money went up to 7/6! I learned from this – in practice – what economists
call the ‘opportunity cost’: that the true cost of buying another lead soldier,
was the extra piece of Meccano which I could not therefore buy.
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| My mother and me, pre–St Leonards days. Location unknown |
I grew up without television, and saw — very occasionally on a friend’s
set — Muffin the Mule, Bill and Ben and the Flowerpot Men, and The Lone Ranger.
Did I miss out? I do not think so. I don’t remember feeling any wish that our
family should also have a television. As a child in the late 1940s and early
1950s I was very happy with radio. Though quite what it was that appealed to me
in Billy Cotton’s Band Show and BFPO (British Forces Posted Overseas) requests
remains a mystery to me! Other programmes, Life with the Lyons and The
Clitheroe Kid, were of their time, and would not appeal now. Though Charles’s
Chilton’s Journey into Space remains as exciting and chilling as when first
broadcast. Importantly, I was not obsessed with ‘the screen’ – even though very
excited by the cinema.
I was happy in this
home, but happier still when we bought a semi–detached house in 1958: for
£1,750. It was not until a few years later that my father earned the then magic
figure of £1,000 per annum.
_____________________________________
A note about my mother’s childhood and youth
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| Mum as a child at Netherfield, Adult unknown |
In 1932, Jess moved to
“Brabans Cottage”, Staple Cross, another village in East Sussex, near to Bodiam
and Northiam. Jess paid approximately £350 for the cottage (the current Zoopla
estimate is £553,333). It is hard now to imagine how rural this existence was,
and one of my mother’s most impressionable memories was of a German Zeppelin
which passed low over Staple Cross. This fascinates me to this day: thinking
that some of the villagers had never even seen the sea. Another memory was of
seeing Queen Mary pass through the village (probably on her way to the hill
town of Rye – the easternmost town in Sussex, at the edge of Romney Marsh. One
other anecdote from this time: Mum and Aunt Jess used occasionally to go to the
cinema in Hastings on Saturdays, but they always had to leave before the end –
walking backwards up the aisle, trying to catch as much as they could – to
catch the last bus to Staple Cross from Wellington Square. And on this bus
there would be a man who had spent his day in the pub. He was met at his stop
by his wife, who had a wheelbarrow to take him home!
In 1938 Aunt Jess moved
to Hastings. Jess was dissatisfied by the offer she had received on the sale of
“Brabans Cottage”, and instructed Godfrey West & Hickman (GW&H) to try
and increase the price. Here are two relevant passages from GW&H’s reply:
“re “BRABHAMS COTTAGE”.
Referring to our Mr. Hickman’s call on you yesterday, when we
submitted to you the offer of £425 we received for the above freehold property from
our applicant Mrs. Small, and you directed him to inform this lady that you
hardly thought this enough, but if we could persuade her to increase her offer
to £430, we could close with her at this figure —
We are pleased to inform you that we have been able to do rather
better than this, as we saw Mrs. Small again this morning and induced her to
increase to Four Hundred and Thirty–five Pounds (£435), which we
have accepted on your behalf, subject to contract and to vacant possession not
being given for at least six weeks, which was in accordance with your
directions.
So, an increase of five pounds: how hard it is to imagine this mattering now!
Click on image to enlarge
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| My mother and Jess at Lover's Seat, Fairlight, near Hastings |
The purchase price of the house in Elphinstone Avenue, Hastings,
was £740). Jess took lodgers, and one
of these was Ken Hart – Mum’s husband to be. (Aunt Jess kept a mallet behind
the front door in case of invasion!)
During the war, my
mother worked for a jeweller in Hatton Garden, and often had to walk past
burning buildings, stepping over fireman’s hoses. In 1944 our family moved to
Swanley in Kent. Unfortunately, this was right in the path of the doodlebugs (flying bombs),
one of which landed in our road, and flipped me right over in my cot in the
shelter. (I was born in April of that year at the Salvation Army Mothers
Hospital in Clapton. Under religion she entered
‘Freethinker’ – and one of the nurses/sisters came round later to see what such
a being looked like! She did not come from a bohemian family, and I still
marvel at her courage.) My
mother also saw the ‘Thousand Bomber Raids’ going over the town – the sky
filled with aircraft in all directions. Once – some years earlier – when my
father was on his bicycle, some lads called out, “France has gone, mister.” And
my father felt a chill, as I can only too easily imagine.
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