The House

THE HOUSE in the life of Alice

The old house in Acton Lane was to give Alice a life of
drudgery as well as the many tragic events she had to cope
with. When Alice arrived with her three small children there
was her sister in law Carrie, who although helping to make
the house even more crowded was at least able to help with
the children, though she herself was busy earning her keep
by taking in the laundry from the large houses around
Turnham Green. Part of the wash was of the white frilled
uniforms housemaids wore and this involved using special
goffering irons to work along the frills. A nightmare scenario
- to our modern eyes - of steaming clothes, irons heating on
the range in the kitchen while the scullery housed the big
stone boiler that provided the boiling water for the
household, this had a tap on the side down near the floor
from which, hopefully, hot water was run into a bucket. The
only other tap in the whole house was for cold water and
this constantly dripped into an old dingy grey stone sink that
sat sullenly in the corner. Certain days were for certain tasks
- it would take all of a Monday just to do the washing and all
Tuesday or Wednesday depending on the drying time, to iron
it. My mother said that a great deal of the washing involved
items that were white which meant they had to be bleached
and much was starched as well. The bedding was another
big chore as all the beds had irish linen sheets, which sounds
nice but if you have ever had to sleep between starched
sheets of linen they lose their allure, and ironing them - is a
sentence of hours.

The scullery was also in use as the Dairy wash-house for
washing all the empty milk bottles that had been collected
that day - two big round wooden tubs were lined up on a
trestle bench, one with boiling water and washing soda and
the other had cold water for rinsing the bottles off. This
method was still being used when I was a child and I can
picture my uncle wielding long bristle brushes and cracking
jokes and gossip with anyone who happeneed to be around -
I was allowed to watch proceedings - and sometimes to do
the rinsing, but kept well away from the hot tub.

The scullery, and the big boiler had been the scene of a near
tragic event when at the ages of eight and four the two
youngest of the family were playing on the top of the boiler
edging round the wooden lid when Iris, my Mother, slipped
and one of her legs slipped into the boiling water. The
resulting scalds and the splashing water which went into her
eye meant being hospitalised. However, Alice decided they
were not looking after her daughter properly and she
wrapped her in a blanket and brought her home on the tram.
Iris was blinded for six months after the accident but with
time and her mothers nursing care her sight returned leaving
her with slight damage to one eye and a healed but scarred
leg. Alice was to continue in looking after her family in the
coming years, her sister in law Carrie became ill with cancer in
1932 and was looked after at home by Alice. This was
followed in 1935 with my grandfather falling ill with
complications after a severe dose of influenza, but due to his
condition needing nursing home care Alice was very upset not
to be able to look after her own husband herself after having
nursed other members of his family. Richard died shortly
before the expected marriage of my mother so her wedding
was put back to the following year, but being in mourning
meant that Alice, as well as Richard, is missing from the
family photographs.

There was no bathroom so it meant bringing into the kitchen
or scullery the tin tub that hung in the outhouse and which was
filled with the water from the boiler. All the bedrooms, of which
there were four, had the usual victorian jug and bowl on a
washstand - water having to be carried up two flights of stairs
to the first two bedrooms and a further flight to the next two
rooms. Just imagine the work involved in the daily care of
babies and children in such an unrewarding house of continual
backbreaking toil - pots under the beds, and with the toilet,
with cess-pit, at the end of the garden during the early years.
During my mothers childhood a narrow dark room had been
added to the side of the house, no washing facilites had been
included at the same time, although it was long enough to
have housed a bath tub, and certainly a wash basin should
have been possible in the space, one must presume lack of
money curtailed any additonal plan. The ramshackle wood
shack that had housed the toilet had been turned into a
chicken house which I remember being there for a short time
during my childhood, there were some very scruffy looking
chickens and I remember comments about there not being
many eggs, but I don't think they ever really expected many
anyway. This, though, had at one time been a thriving dairy
with all the additonal fare of eggs and cream, if one is to go by
their advertising booklet which shows cows in fields and
milking being carried out in a large cow-shed.

In the kitchen in centre place along one wall was the range,
this was kept alight by continuous raking out of the ash and
topping up with coke through-out the day. This monsterous
taker of time and attention also had to be black-leaded and
my grandmothers hands were engrained from this constant
task. Opposite the range was a very old well worn and well
scrubbed table and this was the table of constant daily family
use with its drawer for cutlery in one end, and it's lovely
armed windsor chair; and it had a cushion of all things - it was
'Fathers Chair' - my grandfather having died some 5 years
before I was born was to remain, in part, someone whoI
thought might appear at any moment and claim his chair if I
sat in it - I always had the feeling that my aunt preferred that
the chair not be used, the words never actually spoken, but
they hung there - so I didn't, except when, and feeling very
daring and a bit fearful - would quickly sit - and jump up again
before being discovered. On baking day all the cakes and
biscuits and scones and bread would be left on this table to
cool before being put away and in this ever-moving household
of countless comings and goings a cake or scone would
disappear along with the latest sojourner through the kitchen
- one has to wonder, what was Alice thinking of to so
complicitly deplete her stores so successfully, did she aim to
blunt appetites before the next meal perhaps.

The furnishings were not of Alice's choosing, moving into the home
of her in-laws meant she inherited what was already there for the
most part. The front drawing room was always a puzzle to me, I
used to sit and study the two sideboards that rested side by side as
if joined, but so obviously different one to the other. One was
daintier and smaller than its companion so that they looked as if
they were a married pair. I later found that one was referred to as
Auntie Carrie's sideboard and this had been inherited, apparently,
by Alice's sister in law - a 'stay at home daughter', from her mother
Caroline Polding. And there they still stood some fifty years after
Caroline had willed it to her daughter - and the other one: no one
seemed to know how that had come to be there - and Alice got
them both. Alice had little decision in how the house was arranged -
as much as Richard loved her he lacked the sensitivity to realise
she might like to choose her furnishings - he arrived home one day
to announce he had found the bedroom furniture that was just the
thing for them and it would be arriving shortly. Alice being Alice said
little, but revealed to my mother in later years that she had been
very disappointed and never liked the heavy victorian mahogany
that she had to live with for the rest of her life, but how could she
spoil Richards enthusiastic triumph with presenting her with
something he thought so wonderful that he was convinced she
would be of the same mind.

The house was in part, subterranean as when the railway arrived
at the side of the house a bridge was required, the road outside
was built up and the front drawing room view was turned into a
brick wall with black iron railings on top and it was just possible to
see the bottom half of peoples legs as they walked past, if you
stood close enough to the window that is, and looked up. This
also meant that access for the Dairy paraphernalia was disrupted
and it was at this time that the use of horse and cart was no
longer possible. A change to a hand cart had to be made and a
lift had to be installed to bring the milk-cart down to the level of
the side entrance so it could be wheeled around to the back of
the house to the covered area. This lift was to become one of
the rituals of our Wednesday afternoon visits - to ride up and
down while our uncle turned the handle was a must although it
was so slow that even we began towonder why we found it
enthralling, but I think it would have caused disappointment if we
had shown we no longer cared for this pursuit, how could one
show ingratitude when our uncle offered this treat, although
seeing as how he had been out of his bed since 4 a.m done a
couple of milk rounds, pushed a barrow through the streets
whatever the weather and taken milk further afield on his push
bike - he might just have been relieved.