After looking at several houses, and finding nothing suitable, my father, finally, came across and bought, No. 11, The Wharage, Ironbridge. I remember, virtually, nothing about the move, except that I had to carry my cat from Wrekin View to our new home and I wasn't too sure how to do it. I was told, among many old wives tales and urban myths, to put butter on his paws (goodness, knows why!) or put him in a box and don't let him see where we were going until we arrived as, if I did, at the first opportunity, he'd head back to Wrekin View.
I decided to take the back roads and make my way through the alley ways, avoiding any traffic, and though I did put him in a carrier bag it was only until I got part way along, what we called, Farmer Onions' lane, and past the bull, who never, in all the time I knew him, seemed to stop bellowing (that's the bull, not Farmer Onions), and then I lifted "Tibby" out and sat him on my shoulders - "Tibby" was the cat, not Farmer Onions, nor the bull - just thought I'd better make that clear. In this way, we walked all the way to the Wharfage and he never moved - just sat there, purring. He seemed to think this was a great adventure and never ever attempted to go back to my grandparents' house.
"11, The Wharfage"
Our house, along the "Wharfage", in Ironbridge, was set back from the road and separated from it, by a small front garden lying behind a low brick wall with the access to the front door being through an ornamental, wrought iron gate, set in the centre of the wall, and then up a short, central path.
There was a side entrance from the road that went between our garden and the old warehouse next door, and this led to a very large, paved area that we knew as the backyard but today would be called a "patio", which is, basically, a Spanish “backyard” but, obviously, posher! We, however, were neither Spanish nor posh so, to us, it was the backyard.
Using "Google Maps", and looking at the front of the house, to-day, it has, apparently, been extended, on the left hand side, by the inclusion into the main, original building, of all that remains of Mr Rickers′, single storey, shoe repair shop, which used to extend right down to the shop front, at tyhe edge of the pavement.
My father used to repair all our shoes and, for that purpose, bought the leather he needed from Mr Rickers, who didn′t seem to mind or, if he did, said nothing.
Looking at the house as it is to-day, the room behind the window, on the bottom left, was our small, living-room, while behind that on the right, was our "best room", also known as the "front room", something people had in those days. This "best room" was a room allocated, purely for the use of Christmas and "important people", such as the insurance man, a visiting aunt or uncle, a teacher, a policeman (you hoped, however, you didn′t ever have one of those call on you! - there was something we had, then, called "shame", which is, now, extinct) or a bank manager (that′s when they were, relatively, human, put their customers first, and greed wasn′t their favourite pastime). Most people, then, didn′t have bank managers, and they were happy; they settled, instead, for a cat or a dog, so it really didn′t matter.
This "best room" room was, generally, extremely well cleaned and very highly polished, which, to me, as a boy, seemed to be, probably, the other reason it had been built – purely for cleaning and polishing. I remember watching my mother, every morning, spending a great deal of time, cleaning and polishing the fire place, which only saw a fire at Christmas time or when "important" visitors came.
The fruit, in the fruit bowl, was never eaten but was placed there, cleaned and polished, I am certain, simply, as an experiment – to see how long it took to go all wrinkly, at which time it was quickly replaced by a fresh batch. I don't remember any notes being taken on the results of these experiements but I was very young.
Other people, I can remember, bought wax "fruit", which only needed polishing, and these they placed in their glass fruit bowls.
I, often, wondered why peopel did this, placed fruit in bowls that was never to be eaten, because everybody knew that that's what they did. To-day, we don’t do this; we′re more adult about these things; instead, we have a bowl of wooden "fruit", which is longer-lasting and doesn’t need polishing. The fruit still can't be eaten but it is, at least, scented – so, now, we have apples smelling of roses, and pears of cinnamon, oh and dried sections of lemon and oranges – just how refined can you get?
For me, as a child, the "best" room was always cold and uninviting – very inhospitable, even, I thought, if I had been an "important" visitor.
There was, always, a piano that, generally, no one played but had to be tuned. I wrote many a concert piece but mine were special; because I never really learned to play, my concert pieces had to be played, slowly, with, first the right hand notes, and then the left, followed by the right again, and so on. My parents were never impressed so I took up keeping goldfish, instead.
There was a three-piece suite, made of cold, hard, green leather (or something similar), which, like the fruit, had to be cleaned and polished, but thie time with Johnson's Wax Lavendar polish, obtained from some "Purveyor of Quality Home Accessories" (most probably from Cox's, the grocers, at the bottom of "Tontine Hill"). and promising that it would be "ideal for all antique and fine quality modern furniture", and would "restore the intrinsic beauty of wood and leather", would offer, "lasting resistance to fingermarks and spilled liquids", and, finally, it would also, "protect agaisnt woodworm".
What the polish didn′t do, was warm the leatherette up so it remained cold, both summer and winter, until, that is, having sat still for some time, your body heat warmed it up a bit. Then, however, if you made the mistake of moving, the spot on which you had been sitting lost what warmth your body had passed over to it, while you were, now, waiting for the new spot, you were sitting on, to warm up. The result was I tried not to move, which for a young lad, was very difficult.
The worst times were when maiden aunts called to see us, which wasn′t very often as they lived in Sussex. I wasn′t allowed to be excused, when they came, because they were my maiden aunts, and had come a long way to see me, which wasn't, actually true, but that's waht I was told. So, I had to sit on the cold sofa and listen to conversations that had nothing to do with me, and in which I had no interest.
My aunts would say things like, "and how is little Johnny?" "Tell your aunt how you are, John", my mother would say to me, "your aunt′s speaking to you".
"I’m very well", I would dutifully reply.
"Say "thank you", auntie"
"Thank you, auntie."
Then, they′d do the one thing all we children must have experienced, certainly in those days – it was the he′s/she′s gone deaf or lost their marbles syndrome, and, therefore, he′s/she′s unable to speak for him/herself.
"How′s he doing at school?"; "Does he have many friends?"; "He’s not very tall, is he?"; "Has he stopped wetting the bed?"; "Why′s he setting fire to my feet?"
Many years later, and I am, now, straying into my teen years, which I may do again, one aunt (from Shropshire) smugly asked me, "Does the little interior light, on your car, come on when you open the door.?". Her husband had just bought the family their first car, which, while it was second–hand, like mine, like most people′s in those days, was, also, younger and a bit more up–market. This was understandable as she, her husband and their son and his wife all lived in the same council house and both men were coal–miners, which, at the time was quite a well–paid job, and the women also worked, while I was an apprentice draughtsman.
Anyway, reluctantly, trying to sound as though I didn′t really care, I had to, reluctantly, concede, "No."; a statement on which she, victoriously, pounced with the words, "Ours does!"
How I hated times like that; when the adults were all pretending to be something they were not really, never had been, and, probably, never would be. You could hear the strain of keeping this pretence up in the tone of their voices, and, when I was a child, all this while, I had to sit, wearing short trousers, on that bl’!#*y freezing cold settee/sofa, or whatever they′re called to-day.
Generally, however, our relatives stayed in hotels, which was a blessing because, I knew they would, eventually, have to leave for the evening meal and we could go back to being normal. The only problem was that, before they went, I had to have a kiss from each of them – and I, always, held my breath, while being kissed, until I was, again, a reasonable distance away from them, which was because maiden aunts always smelled of something that I found extremely unpleasant, but I had no idea, then, what it was. Later, much later, I found out it was something in which they soaked their teeth, overnight – okay, to me it smelled of dead rat (or how I imagined dead rat would smell) but, apparently, it wasn’t. Many years later, on business, I visited a laboratory and was shown into one of their sample rooms where the walls were covered with shelves having, upon them, many bottles, with each bottle containing a biological specimen in a liquid-filled jar, which I was told was formaldehyde and, once again, I remembered my maiden aunts, as the room reeked of this dead smell (not the same smell, but reminiscent of it); a smell that the people working there didn’t seem to notice. I wondered, later, if these biologists ever went out for a meal without having a complete, intensive shower, and were surprised to find the restaurant rapidly emptying. Just a thought!
In retrospect, I often wonder what I smelled of, to them, but let’s not go down that route!
The top window on the left was my bedroom, and it came complete with an open fire place, which was a boon on a cold night as, before we went to bed, my mother carried up a shovel of hot coals from the fire downstairs and put it in my grate, finally adding just a bit of coal to the top.
I’d lie there, snuggled up to the neck in sheets and blankets, with the light turned off, watching the flickering flames reflected on the ceiling and the walls and eventually fall, happily, asleep. If only I could do that, now!
Often, my cat, Tibby, would come to bed with me and would lie, purring loudly, with his head on the pillow and covered up to his neck, much the same as I was. He’d stay that way until I fell asleep and would then, at some time, in the night, get up and go to the foot of the bed where he would curl up and wait for morning.
He was my guard cat – if I thought I heard a strange sound in my room or outside, I’d give him a gentle kick with my foot and, if he started purring, which he always did, then I could go back to sleep knowing I was safe.
The other two windows on the same floor were those of the main bedroom, which, also, had an open fireplace, and was my parents’ bedroom.
To-day, in the images on “Google Maps”, all the windows appear to be double glazed and have a PVCu look about them but I may be wrong because they, also, still look to be sash windows, something I learned how to repair by watching my father do just that; it was so simple, that, even at the age of ten, I could have done it myself. The result was that I wanted, when I grew up, to have a house with sash windows but life’s hard and I never got one. Such are the trials and tribulations of life – and the unfairness – I bet David Beckham’s got them.
At the back of the house, and to the one side, was the old washing house, with a fire grate and chimney. Years ago, once the fire had been lit and the water boiled, the weekly washing was done.
Because of the steeply rising sides of the valley, the wash house had been built backing into, and thus helping to support, the garden behind the house; a garden that was about level with the second floor of the house and, mainly, held back by a high brick wall, just like the terraced fields in places such as India. This building of the wash house back into the ground meant that it always seemed to be damp and had a musty smell.
There were piles of something on the floor and, perhaps, my parents knew what was there but I didn’t and hated going into the place. I imagined all sorts of strange creepy-crawlies in the dark recesses and the corners.
A long flight of concrete steps led up to the garden proper and this was something that I liked very much. Right at the back of the garden was another tall wall, keeping next-doors garden from falling into ours – and thus it went on, up the bank!
I never did, quite, get used to that house because there were always areas that seemed to be permanently damp – a few inside and many more outside – and, of course, the river was just across the road, the valley sides kept the sun out for most of the year, and the back never saw any real daylight.
My father said that, when he bought the house, he had been told that it used to be the old telephone exchange, but, so far, I have not been able to find any proof of that. There was one peculiarity in our house, however, that lent itself to the notion that the story might have some truth. Upon entering through the front door into the short hallway, you were met by another door that had no reason to be there, as all it did was put another barrier across the hallway. You had to open that to get access to the rest of the house.
The top half of the door was glazed with small, obscure glass panels, and had a small, hinged, glass door (from memory about 10 inches wide, by 12” high) at the bottom of the glazed portion. A small shelf, the width of this small door, projected about 6” into the hallway and looked to all intents and purposes as though it were a serving hatch.
In the Kelly’s Directory of Shropshire, 1913, however, there is a Miss Hilda Watkis, a professor of music, L. A. R. M. living in the house and there was a “telephone call office”, as part of the old post office (Mrs Caroline Rose Randall, post mistress) in the Market Square.
