Peeling Back The Years

I seem to be on a bit of a roll with articles about DIY at the moment, so I thought I’d continue with something which although inspired by some DIY I was doing at the weekend, is not actually about DIY at all. It’s actually about memories, the inspiration for which I’ve gleaned from various other recent columns, but this isn’t about my personal memories, it’s about someone else’s memories, and in fact something else’s memories.

I began the rather daunting task of stripping the ancient wallpaper from our stairwell last Saturday afternoon, and as I was scraping off the heavily embossed brittle paper, a strange thought crossed my mind that I was stripping away part of our house’s history; removing some of the memories that have held it together since it was built in 1936.

When we bought the house in September 2002, it had been lived in for 66 years by the original owner, a widow who had unfortunately died a few months earlier. She and her husband had moved into the house on its completion in December 1936, and rented it from the initial owner until 1941 when they bought it. Her daughter had inherited the house on her mother’s death in May 2002, and wanted to sell it as quickly as possible, primarily to finance her son’s move to Canada, but also, she told me, because the house didn’t hold any fond memories for her, even thought it was where she lived and grew up as a child.

When we finally got our mortgage documents through from our solicitor, it included the original conveyance, search and mortgage documents, now yellowing as they are well into their 7th decade of existence. As I leafed through them for the first time, I recall the wonderfully aged and stale odour which permeated my nostrils, and I instantly wondered what our house must have been like when it was first built.

The house is nothing special when viewed as just one of the thousands of similar houses in suburban England that are of the same style and vintage; it’s a 1930’s mock Tudor 3 bed end-of-terrace in the most suburban of suburban roads, yet it cost £1150 when Mr & Mrs Rosser purchased it in 1941. The original owner, Mr Archibald Birchmore (who as far as I’m aware never lived in the house), took out a mortgage of £640 with The National Building Society on the 10^th December 1936, and pledged to pay monthly instalments of £3 15s 5d on the 10^th of each month thereafter until the full amount was repaid, so if that was the full purchase price of the house when it was first completed that he appears to have made a pretty penny in 5 years, especially considering that two of those years were during the Second World War.

I remember the first time we visited the house in July 2002. We’d set our hearts on buying one of these mock Tudor houses, built by one George Crouch Ltd. and although the company had built several different types of house within the mock Tudor style, we decided on a particular style and layout of house in a particular road, so we’d limited ourselves quite drastically. However, we weren’t in a huge hurry to move at the time, and we also decided that if we were going to be spending a couple of hundred grand on a house then we wanted to make sure we found one which we were completely happy with. This particular house had been on the market for about 5 weeks, but we had initially dismissed it because we were considering a loft conversion at some stage, and as this was an end-of-terrace house the loft was much more expensive and complex to convert than its mid-terrace counterpart. However, after having no luck and months of waiting around for our particular choice of house in our favoured road to come onto the market, we decided that we needed to broaden our horizons somewhat.

We initially looked at a couple of houses which were the right style of property but not in our favoured road, but for one reason or another they weren’t suitable. We then broadened our choice further by looking at a house which was neither the style we wanted nor in our favoured road, but when we discovered that this house had poky little rooms and seemed so much less spacious overall than our favoured style of house, we went back to our original plan and felt we should sit tight and wait for what we really wanted. However, as we were now getting a bit fed up with waiting around, we decided to bite the bullet and have a look at the house which was an end-of-terrace version of our favoured style and also happened to be in our favoured road. Ironically, this was a decision which was made on the spur of the moment after we’d left the aforementioned poky house, and in hindsight I’m so glad we did.

We knew that what we ideally wanted was a house that was fairly dated so that we could snap it up for a bargain price and then renovate it to our own tastes, rather than paying a premium for something which may well have been fully refurbished but was ultimately not to our taste. After all, we hardly wanted to stretch ourselves to the limit mortgage-wise only to rip everything out and start again anyway. However, it wasn’t until we first walked through the front door that we really learnt what ‘in need of some updating’ really meant. The first thing that hit us was the smell. Even at this point prior to us knowing that the owner of the house had recently passed away, I immediately though the house smelt as if someone had died in it. This was in fact not the case; poor Maisi had died in hospital not at home, and so the pungent odour was in fact just that stale smell that your granny’s house always seems to smell of, coupled with the fact that the place hadn’t been aired for weeks. But whilst perhaps this should have put us off the property immediately, it in fact did the opposite, and as we explored this wonderful but modest little house, we fell in love with it.

If any of you happened to see the TV series The 1940’s House which was on Channel Four a couple of years ago, you’ll have a good idea of what our house was like inside when we first saw it. I’m over-exaggerating a little; the house wasn’t quite the perfectly restored and 100% authentic period property featured in the series (which, incidentally is just off West Wickham High Street a few hundred yards from where I work), but it was terribly dated, and probably a lot more than your average granny’s house. The two largest bedrooms each had a period free-standing wardrobe which most certainly were original 1930’s or 40’s originals, and in hindsight I wish we’d found them a good home in a junk shop or reclamation yard rather than dumping them as we eventually did. The kitchen and bathroom were almost ‘as new’, bar a few updates here and there. Mind you, when I say updates, I’m talking 1960’s or 70’s ‘improvements’ rather than 21st century modernisation. The bathroom was still decked out in its original black and white tiles, enormously cumbersome basin and original cast-iron bath, and the modest update was a mixer tap on the bath from the early 1980’s. The kitchen had, and in fact still has, the original floor-to-ceiling, wall-to-wall cupboards along one wall, complete with original fold-down flap with integral enamelled worktop (I remember at the time remarking that it resembled a giant advent calendar). Although we’ve very slightly updated the kitchen now, when we first saw the house there was still an ancient twin-tub washing machine standing proudly against the opposite wall, the only other items in the room being a 1960’s vintage stainless steel sink unit with a cupboard underneath and a three-quarter height fridge freezer, both of which we still have and use. But pride of place in the kitchen must go to the New World gas cooker which dated from the late 1950’s. As ancient as it is, I’m almost proud to admit that it still has pride of place in our kitchen and although the oven packed up about a year ago, we still use the hob almost every day and I actually enjoy the task of cleaning this prehistoric cooking appliance with all its lovely enamel and chrome. The rest of the house was furnished with 1960’s and 70’s pieces, including a particularly horrible looking gas fire and surround in the lounge which could quite easily have come straight out of an episode of Man About The House or George And Mildred. The lounge also had a 1940’s dining table and chairs and a period sideboard from the same era which although was extremely cheap and cheerful when it was made during the Second World War, is now of a style which is quite sought after. There was also a three piece suite dating most probably from the 1970’s which although extremely dated and not particularly attractive, just added to the endearing atmosphere and character which this house was exhibiting to us in spades. Everything else in the house followed the same pattern. Heavy drapes on the windows which had seen better days, swathes of net curtains clogged with dust, a mixture of plain and flowery carpets which ranged from fairly springy in feel to utterly flat and worn out. All the doors in the house bar one had their original Bakelite handles, the original wooden windows at the front of the house which had been bravely fighting against the elements for almost 70 years were now beginning to disintegrate and had warped to such an extent that they either didn’t close properly or were wedged shut to the extent where they wouldn’t budge.

But more than the fixtures and fittings, it was all the peripheral items which gave the house it’s character, and more importantly gave the house a life and a history, and told us a little about this dear lady named Maisi Rosser whom we never knew. As the house was more or less untouched since the last time she’d left to go to hospital, there were still faded photographs dotted about the place, cheap but colourful prints on the walls, and even – though it was a slightly odd thing to find – her pink quilted dressing gown hanging on a hook on the back of her bedroom door. There was a complete set of flowery crockery in the kitchen cupboards, cutlery in the drawers (a plain set in the kitchen and a better quality set in a drawer in the sideboard - just like everyone’s granny has), mugs in the cupboards with black and white cats painted on them, hot water bottles, clothes pegs, brooms, bottles of bleach – in fact aside from the lack of clothes (with the exception of the aforementioned dressing gown), food in the kitchen and personal hygiene items in the bathroom, it was as if she’d just popped out to the newsagent to buy a paper.

Even though we’d more-or-less decided that we loved the house, its ambience at this stage was giving off some mixed vibes for me. On one hand it was sad that this octogenarian lady’s life had come to an end and the house would be home to its original owner no more, but on the other hand it seemed a happy house to us; it may have been woefully dated but it was a cosy home which had obviously been loved by its original owners as they had lived there since day one. The very first house we looked at in the area wasn’t quite so dated as this one but was terribly dirty and grimy, and a real mess. It had a really foreboding and unhappy atmosphere about it and we soon decided this wasn’t for us. The other few houses we looked at were still lived in by the owners, and so didn’t really give off any sort of vibes at all; they were all quite forgettable. It was only this house - our house - which gave us that oft-quoted ‘X’ factor which everyone talks about these days. They say that you decide whether or not you like a house within the first 11 seconds of seeing it, but I think we’d probably made our decision in less time than that.

A week or so before we were due to complete and move into the house, the vendor contacted me to say that as she lived in Essex, she was going to pay for the estate agents to come to the house and remove all the remaining furniture (she and her husband had visited the house a few weeks before to remove all of Maisi’s personal belongings and any other bits and pieces that they wanted to keep). As we had sold all our furniture with the flat we were due to move out of, I asked her not to bother as we’d be happy to keep all the remaining furniture, if she would allow us, to use until we got round to replacing it. She readily agreed, adding that it would also save her the hassle and expense of having to organise it herself. Aside from the two wardrobes as already mentioned, and a couple of other small items, we still have the furniture that was left, and although it’s still dreadfully dated and not something you’d be proud to show off to anyone, it still allows us, for the time being at least, to retain some of that original ambience that we experienced the first time we crossed the threshold.

We still have all the cutlery and the feline-decorated coffee mugs. She even left a gargantuan colour TV set which although about 30 years old was still in working order, and we kept this in our bedroom and used it for about six months until we decorated and bought new furniture. Although we thought that all her personal belongings had gone, I was delighted to discover an original Roberts radio in the back of a cupboard in the kitchen a short time after we moved in. It still works, and now has pride of place on the windowsill in our smallest bedroom, which we now use as an office. The pink dressing gown was also still there on the day we moved in, as was Maisi’s double bed and bedclothes. Those particular items have long been disposed of, but we still have the divan base of the bed which is in use in our spare bedroom, albeit with a new mattress. Gone now are the original windows at the front of the house, but this was due to necessity; how she survived all those winters with the wind howling through the gaps round the windows I’ll never know. But unlike some of the other residents in our road, we have replaced them with UPVC windows which are aesthetically sympathetic to the originals (some people need shooting as a result of their abhorrent choice of replacement windows, but that’s another story).

Even though we’ve already gutted the first floor of the house and completely refurbished it to a point where you’d never believe it was the same house, we’ve kept one or two of the original features just to remind us of the origins of the house we bought 18 months ago. Gone are the original picture rails and door handles (I made absolutely sure that the door handles went to a reclamation yard for future use and enjoyment), but where others would have ripped out the original doors and replaced them with moulded impostors of little character, I insisted that we retained the originals but stripped them back to their original glory, enhanced by a couple of coats of beeswax.

We initially kept the gargantuan twin-tub washing machine, with the serious intention of using it for a short while until we got round to buying ourselves a washing machine, but after reading through the instruction manual we decided that it was far too complicated and labour intensive (have you ever tried to use one of those things?), so this was dumped within a few days. Aside from the addition of our TV, stereo, a change of curtains and some other peripheral items, our lounge still looks the same today as it did when we bought the house. It may not be sparklingly clean and freshly painted but it’s comfortable and cosy. As the years pass by, the house will retain less and less of it’s original charm and ambience, but it will also gain in being a comfortable home for the 21^st century.

All these thoughts have been prompted by the removal of some wallpaper. Mr Rosser died of prostate cancer aged 83 on Christmas day in 1994 - I only know this because for some bizarre reason a copy of his death certificate is included within our solicitor’s report on the property. Our neighbours (who have lived next door since 1984) tell us that he was a bit of a lazy old git who never did anything around the house. Whether this was true of him over the previous 50-odd years I’ll never know, but scraping off the wallpaper in the stairwell revealed one layer of lining paper underneath and bare plaster beneath that, so I can only assume that this really was the original wallpaper from the 1930’s. There were no layers of different coloured paper underneath which would normally have revealed the differing colours and styles of the past 6 or 7 decades. If the character reference from our neighbours is correct, then Mr Rosser would not have the incentive to either strip everything away and start again or paper over the original layer, so perhaps just a couple of fresh coats of paint over the years was all that our house ever received.

When I first went in the loft, I was looking forward to find long forgotten treasures from years gone by, but there was nothing up there bar a cat litter tray and a couple of newspapers from 1975. Actually, I found the skeleton of a poor mouse near the loft hatch who’d obvious found his way up there some years previous but had been unable to get out.

In a couple of months time when all the re-plastering has been completed, I want to frame some of the original mortgage and deed documents and hang them on the wall going up the stairs. I also want to go to Morden Library and see if I can find any period photographs of houses in our road so I can copy and also hang them in the hall. I long to couple my perceived memories of the house and the street with real images of a monochrome tree-lined road with a few random vintage cars dotted here and there.

All very silly, really. Most people just find a house, buy it, move in, slap a bit of paint on the walls and move somewhere else a few years later. But nostalgia and curiosity get the better of me sometimes. Well, most of the time, really.