The House Where I Was Born

 69 years ago today I was born in this house belonging to my Grandma and Grandad, in Stowmarket in Mid Suffolk..

My Mum was staying with her Mum and Dad for my birth. My dad had been killed in a motorbike accident a few months earlier and the house they had bought to renovate wasn't yet in any condition for a new-born baby.

After that I don't know how or where we lived, but our house was finished for me and Mum, even though there was no bathroom and only an outside toilet  for a few years- which I can just about remember - thank goodness the bathroom was built after a while.

As for Grandma and Grandad's house,  they lived there until  she died in 1988, Grandad died many years earlier. The family moved there in the 1930's (Mum was one of six) when the tiny house they were living in not far away was condemned. These houses in Stowmarket were council houses built between the wars. They were built with a scullery for washing up off the kitchen and there was a built in brick boiler thing in one corner to heat water for washing - heated by a coal fire underneath, the bath stood beside it - with only a cold tap. The indoor toilet was on a half landing and there were steps down to a cellar for coal storage. 

There were two other rooms downstairs although one was never used, and I only remember it because of the pictures on the wall - one was a huge print of J.F Millet The Gleaners -  how and why? The only heating was a coal fire in the main living room.

When the houses were modernised in the late 1960's they turned the 'best' room into a proper fitted kitchen and the scullery into a bathroom.

Mum visited her parents every Thursday............ we were the nearest grandchildren, going on the bus to Stowmarket with me and then me and my sister  when we weren't at school. We would get off the bus, walk down to Grandmas for coffee and then walk 'up the town' for shopping so although we never stayed or visited any other time  I remember the house well. Occasionally we would go into town first and then walk back to Grandmas picking up Fish and Chips for lunch on the way.

 There was a honeysuckle arch over the front door for all the years I remember visiting. 

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Sue