Houses and homes…

I mentioned earlier that the family history writing group had been given a task – by me, to write about houses or buildings associated with them or their families and they did so splendidly! A vicarage in Gloucester, a 1950’s house in Sussex and a town house built in 1905 and only lived in by two families since then. I began to think back to places I’ve lived in…

There have been three, maybe four of what might be called the family home which my parents and sister and I lived…

• 18A Metcalf Road Cambridge; a 1948 two bedroomed ground floor flat, separate bathroom and lavatory, kitchen and sitting room. We lived there until I was fourteen – the lady who owned the flat lived upstairs and she was such a kind lovely person we were really reluctant to move… but eventually my parents wanted to by their own property so we moved to…
• 22 Harvey Goodwin Avenue, also in Cambridge. a 1920’s three bedroomed semi-detached house with a kitchen, dining room and lounge and a separate bathroom and lavatory upstairs, and like the previous home, a large garden
• 5 Burnham Drive, Bleadon Hill, Weston-super-Mare, a brand new bungalow with a garage beneath the master bedroom – it was built on a hill so the rest of the accommodation was all on one level. Dining lounge, kitchen, three bedrooms and yes, separate bathroom and lavatory, a wide rather than long back garden with a big lawn at the front

After that I moved to Manchester and had a number of different flats and bedsits, sharing with others or on my own, in Withington, Whalley Range, and last of all Chorlton-cum-Hardy… but that’s a whole other story I’ve written about elsewhere!

I moved up to Oldham, first of all to a three bedroom semi… the least said about that the better, not a happy time in my life. Then I moved to a new bungalow in a different part of the town and that was my lucky move. Within about three years I’d gone from being a single person to being married with two babies!

That was not the last move; nearly twenty years ago we moved back to Weston-super-Mare, to the village of Uphill… and here we still are!