Rose Cottage Memories
Written as part of Amy Johnson Crow’s “52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks” challenge. This week’s topic: Favorite Place
Rose Cottage, in the tiny hamlet of Hewish, was our home from the middle of 1941, when I was a few months old, until March 1948. A short distance from the market town of Crewkerne,[1] my brother Ian and I would walk the mile and a half home from school, climbing up the long rising incline of Hermitage Street, leveling off into Lyme Road,[2] between deep hedgerows hiding the farm fields from view. Turning right, we would run down winding Hewish Lane into the hamlet. Or with my mother in the lead, ride down the lane on our bikes, she with my baby sister in a basket on the front of hers, I on my tiny ‘fairy’ bike. Down we went, sweeping right at the bottom, under the railway bridge, then a sharp left up the short gravel incline to the cottage.
Every calendar of rural England has a picture of an ancient, thatch-roofed cottage, with roses trailing over the front entrance. But our cottage was far from picturesque. In a terrace of three attached cottages, Rose Cottage was at one end, the Edwards’ home at the other, and in between the two was squeezed a smaller one, occupied by the Holt family. A rough stone wall faced the gravel roadway, a gate in the middle opening on to the tiny front garden, a short path leading to the front door. The cottage was squat and wide under its thatch, which generations of thatchers had re-laid and reshaped till it was now several feet thick. The upstairs windows were only a few layers of mud and stones higher than those below. Over the door was the rose trellis that gave the cottage its name. And inside lay a cozy interior, warm with memories.
Rose Cottage is the one on the right, with a brand new thatch, and the beginnings of a rose trellis.
No formal entrance, a simple stone flagged space opened to a small kitchen on one side, and behind that a bathroom. Mum was mostly in the kitchen, but I have few memories of spending time there, rather of being chased away by a busy mother. It was then that I learned that mothers don’t have time to answer all the questions even their favorite child asks. Curiosity killed the cat and made the monkey squeal, I was told. I tested it for myself one evening in the bathroom when my parents were next door. What happens if you do stick your fingers in where they put a plug to turn the heater on? What happened was a jolt of 240-volt electricity shooting through my hand, up my arm, through my entire body. A very convincing demonstration, fortunately not fatal. Nor was the tonsillitis that is at the centre of another bathroom memory. I am lying in the bath having my hair washed, but screaming, not my normal reaction. But mum knew enough, apparently, to take me to the doctor, and before long I was in the hospital having my tonsils removed.
On the other side of the front entrance, a door opened onto the large living room, whose ancient, roughhewn, oak beams stretched from wall to wall on either side. One beam ended in a large, open fireplace in which had hung for many years the cooking pots that fed the families of yore. Its hearth was big enough for us to sit in, and on wintry nights we would huddle on stools as close as we could to the burning logs. Sofa and chairs were arranged near the fireplace, while at the front of the room, overlooked by a big window, was a heavy, dark oak dining table.
Mum with pets by the fire
To one side was an alcove under the stairs, in which stood my father’s desk,[3] in a space we kids were supposed to leave undisturbed, or else. One week I chose Dad’s desk to hide my sweet ration. You probably don’t know about sweet rations. During and after the war many kinds of food were strictly rationed, but there was an allowance of sweets for children every week. We would put up with the tiresome weekly shopping trip every Saturday, knowing that at the end we would visit the sweet shop and claim our allowance. The dilemma was then to decide whether to eat it all quickly or find a safe place to hide it from thieving siblings. Knowing that I was braving trouble, I hid my loot in Dad’s forbidden desk, thinking it would surely be safe there. Wrong. When I went to retrieve it, it was gone. At first, I was afraid to report the theft, but my sense of the unfairness of it got the better of me. Then we all had to put up with the lecture – hider as well as suspected thieves. None of the suspects owned up, and I never did get the sweets replaced. No rewards for tattle-telling.
Above the alcove was a long straight staircase to the second floor. Some nights I would sit on the stairs listening to my parents entertaining guests – and on occasion I would get called upon to recite. They seemed to like showing me off, and I apparently didn’t resent it either. “How now, brown cow” or “Where are you going? I don’t quite know. Down to the stream where the kingcups grow. Up on the hills where the wild winds blow. Anywhere, anywhere, I don’t know.” All recited in my best Elocution English, a defense against acquiring a local dialect.
The staircase went up to a landing, off which led two doors into three rooms - our parents’ bedroom, a room you had to walk through to get to their room, and a third room, where I slept with my brother.
Lying in bed I would often hear the trains shunting in the rail yards two miles away. Mostly I found the sound comforting, a confirmation that the world would still be there while I was sleeping. But then the older boys told us little ones that the sounds we heard in the night weren’t really trains. They were the sounds made by wolves, disguising themselves as trains so we wouldn’t suspect they were nearby. After that, I would lie still, hold my breath, not daring to make a sound, not knowing how close they were but all too aware that our house was made of mud, not bricks, so a big bad bold wolf could easily huff and puff and blow the house down. I still remember the fear and excitement of listening to the wolves, but I would never give in to those fears. I refused to look under the bed to see if there was a monster. That would be a giveaway, would let the monster, if there, know that I was scared. Better to ignore it completely. Instead I’d reach for one of the stuffed animals which lined a long shelf next to my bed. There was a teddy bear, naturally, and a doll or two, and a dog on wheels. But my pride and joy was a black and white panda. He sat there, tall and proud and kept me safe from whatever wild animals or monsters might linger in the neighborhood.
There were many other sounds in the night too. Owls, roosters, moans in the rafters, sticks snapping, winds sighing, cows and horses snuffling and shuffling in the barns. But apart from that brief time under the spell of the wolf story I had no fear of these. I found it very strange when we hosted some boy scouts from London,[4] a group of city kids, mostly from the East End, few of whom had ever been outside the city. We were astonished to learn that these boys, boastful of their exploits among what we thought of as the terrors of the city, were terrified by the sounds they heard in the night and scared of the open spaces of our beloved countryside.
The walk-through bedroom was once the scene of a fire. I was in bed one summer evening in the next room, when my brother, playing with matches, dropped one on the bed. Knowing better than to call for help, he ran downstairs and grabbed the bellows from the fireplace. My parents were out in the front yard talking with Mrs. Holt from next door, when they suddenly saw smoke pouring forth from the window. I was blissfully ignorant till I heard the adults come pounding up the stairs, shouting and yelling at the tops of their voices. They soon calmed down, though, and put out the fire quickly. The house was safe, little damage done, and I went back to sleep. But for Ian the damage lasted longer. He had some difficulty sitting down for several days.[5]
Still upstairs, there was Mum and Dad’s room with its solid furniture – beds, wardrobe, dressing table and mirror, all in the same heavy oak as the dining room table. They provided great hiding places for the games of hide and seek we played when we had friends over. Or sardines, the game where one person hides and everyone else seeks, and finders have to hide in the same place – the wardrobe was wonderful for that. But how old was I, I wonder, when I noticed that my parents had twin beds – and pondered how they made babies?
At the back of the house was a small scullery, the scene of steamy activity on Mondays, when the laundry was done, to be hung out to dry on Tuesdays, and ironed and put away on Wednesdays. Unlike our neighbors, we had indoor plumbing and a lavatory, whose workings were not altogether reliable, so we still often used the one outside, in a shed in the yard. Often, I would hear the ‘night-soil man’[6] as he was called, clatter through the back yard in the still of the night to gather up the old can in exchange for the new.
Beyond the outhouse was a garden that in my memory stretches on forever. There was a sandpit, an open space where we could play ball games, a large vegetable garden from which Mum supplemented our meager food rations. From one gnarled old apple tree hung a swing.[7] It had a bar across and we were given strict instructions never to ride in it without pulling down the bar to keep us safe. Daredevils that we were, we rode with scant attention to safety – till the dread day I flew through the hedge of brambles and arrived screaming in the backyard of the neighbor’s house. I got little sympathy from Dad on that occasion.
Of the fields beyond the end of the garden I have no picture in my mind – only a memory of Mum’s voice calling us in at the end of long summer days. But I know there were streams, and we would take jars for catching sticklebacks and minnows. There were cowpats to jump over and decisions about whether we could safely cross a field with steers or heifers in it. Best of all, there were trees to climb. I was a champion tree climber, enjoyed the thrill of pushing that margin of safety just a little bit – till one day I realized I’d gone beyond my comfort zone and had to force myself back down without letting the others know I was scared. I was happiest outdoors, contented playing in the sandbox or in the dirt, making, doing things. Indoors my constant occupation was reading, more reading, or – and often reprimanded for - day dreaming. Easier to escape outside again.
I would love to recapture that time and space, but sadly they are forever gone.
NOTES
[1] Think Lark Rise to Candleford for a sense of the relationship between the hamlet and the market town.
[2] Lyme Road leads to Lyme Regis, and to the Cobb, known to the French Lieutenant’s Woman.
[3] Now in Ian’s living room. Mum and Dad had the stairs rearranged creating this alcove and putting in a new window.
[4] The “Gang Show”, a renowned annual stage show performed by the Boy Scouts, was directed by a son of Crewkerne, one Ralph Reader. One year he decided to bring the troupe, the whole gang, to visit and perform in his home town. PHOTO.
[5] In 2006 such a fire had a quite different, and tragic, outcome.
[6] The "night soil man" was a person employed to remove human excrement from privies and cesspits at night.