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Doreen Robinson remembers Louth in Lincolnshire where she was born in 1937 |
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I was born in rented rooms in a house once lived in by Alfred Lord Tennyson. My mother had been a domestic servant in Grimsby and my father was a saddler.[There were many farm horses still used in Lincolnshire as the tractor revolution had not arrived.]
For a while we lived in the little village of Swaby where my mother was born. The village had no electricity or gas. We used Paraffin lamps, cooked on the iron range beside the wood fire, which also heated water in a boiler. [The hearth also provided a warm breeding place for huge black beetles which came out at night and were still visible when we got up.]
The washing was done in a small shed called the wash house. Gran built a fire underneath the’ copper’[ or boiler] and she achieved a whiter wash than I have ever done. The clothes were wrung by hand or with a mangle and if the weather was too wet to hang them out to dry, the whole house was strewn with wet sheets. The smell of clothes drying is one of my earliest memories
The other smell memory came from the outdoor earth closet. There were two holes in the platform [presumably large families couldn’t wait] with a bucket underneath and a cold draught.
My father’s job was to empty the bucket into a cesspit in a nearby field.[the original organic farming]
We used to go out early in the morning and pick mushrooms for breakfast and I was convinced they grew in a fairy ring.
We fetched our water from the village pump but my great Aunt had a water spring at the bottom of her garden. The water was so pure that it was immediately drinkable and deliciously cold on a hot day.
We had the freedom to roam anywhere in the village, in the fields, and the farmyard, to watch milking of the cows and even the killing of the pigs [ although my mother disapproved of this last activity my brother was fascinated.] It was my job to take a can of tea to my Uncle during Harvest when they used the old method of sheaves and stooking. We were allowed to ride on top of the wagon stacked with sheaves, as the horses took them back to the farmyard for stacking and threshing.
Notes:
stooking - a small circle of sheaves.
threshing - the removal of the grain from the wheat, oats, or barley plants.
written by Doreen Hale
© October 2000 Doreen Robinson Part of the Silver Surfers' Project by trAce Online Writing Centre for the 2000 Cheltenham Festival of Literature