A glimpse into the past...

 

Our lovely fireplace - seen here at Christmas

Pretty much as soon as we moved into the house we started trying to find out a bit about its history - the town itself is pretty well documented and we already knew a reasonable amount as we'd gone through the same exercise when we first moved here - indeed, I even have a blog site now with images of the town as it is now and references to the history. It is far harder to find information about specific areas of housing though - the building of the town was divided into neighbourhoods first and foremost, and then estate areas within that - we fall into one of the earlier neighbourhoods to be built, and had narrowed the building our house down to a narrow band of years around 1950, and had in fact managed to find some old photographs which bore this out also in a visit to our local museum. 

A couple of weeks back we were outside the house chatting with a builder who had come to quote for some work we're considering having done, when a gentleman walked past, hesitated for a moment, then said "I hope you don't mind me interrupting, but I was born in this house!" - well, as you can imagine, that caused QUITE the excitement! He told us that he was born in 1955, and lived in the house with his Mum (initially his Dad too, but sadly his Dad died when he was still very young) and 4 siblings too until they all gradually left home as they reached adulthood - imagine anyone being happy to have 6 people living in a 3 bedroom house now! They were the first family to live in the house from new - and had many happy years in it which is so lovely to know - it has always felt like a "happy house" if you know what I mean, we know our predecessors loved it here too. 

We asked if he would like to come in for a look round the downstairs (which is after all the bit that has changed the most) and he initially declined, but then a few minutes later asked if it would be OK if he changed his mind as he admitted he was curious to see how it looked and felt - we said that of course it was, and I lead him inside. The front room he told me was much the same - and yes, it did originally have an open fire, as would have been expected at that time! The back of the house has of course changed hugely thanks to our sellers building the extension, shed and garden office - he told me that the garden was of course much bigger when they were there which we'd known of but never really thought about - and they had 5 apple trees and a pear tree, if only THOSE were still there now! 

It was an absolutely fascinating conversation and really gave us insight into the house and its history which was lovely - a subsequent conversation with a neighbour later in the day helped fill in more blanks as well - it seems likely that we are the fourth people to live here since it as built in the very early 1950's - with a young couple with a couple of daughters filling the gap between the original family selling (after the death of his mother, by the sound of it) and our sellers moving in in the mid 2000s. It prompted me to look at some of the paperwork from when we bought the house too - including the copy we have of the original transfer from the Council when it was bought under Right to Buy  in the late 1980's - we now believe by our friend from the above conversation's mother. (I'm kicking myself, at no stage during the conversation did we think to get his name, or tell him ours!) MrEH & I have also agreed that a task for the winter is probably to pick up once again on more of the local history we'd looked into previously - perhaps with another trip to the Museum archives. 

Robyn