Moving Home
By Barbara Thomas
A very short version of the moves I have made to different homes. Also a look into the past Social history.
Looking back through the years from 1941 until 2025 I realized I
must have moved at least 30 times.
A gipsy I’m not……..
Starting from my birth, my mother who had recently been bombed
out, was living at my Gran’s with my two older sisters, Dad was overseas doing
his bit in the army.
So after leaving the maternity hospital I went to live at my granny Smiths.
When I was about 18 months old the house next to Gran’s became
vacant, so Mum, my two siblings and I moved into my second home. Although there
was some near misses with bombs and doddle bugs we survived.
I lived there until the tender age of 17 when I got married.
(As I had an obussive Father very handy with his strap I couldn’t wait to leave home).
There was none of this living together malarkey not in those days.
My new husband and I moved a fair distance from my family home.
It comprised of literally 2 rooms which were way up on the 4th floor.
Our landlord who also lived in the house in the basement he was a very creepy old gentleman.
With no bathroom, although what I never had I never missed. Tin bath and local baths were the norm growing up at both previous homes.
At first I thought it was wonderful away from my tyrant of a father, I think he must have suffered what we now call PDST which took him a long time to settle into civilian life and ordered us children around like we were part of his battalion.
After two years living in the 2 rooms, came the babies, one after the other Danny and Gary, I would heave their pram up four flights of stairs as we weren’t allowed to leave the pram in the passage.
My second son had been born in the terrible winter of 1961/62
Oil heaters were the only means of warmth; we had icicles that froze on the insides of the windows.
When my boys were respectively 18 and 6 months old I heard from a relative that my parents had decided to move after my Gran died. They took out a mortgage, instead of renting a house.
I seized the moment and took two very long bus rides through
She always had a soft spot for me, as my Gran offered her the use of the upstairs parlour when she came every weekend to collect the rents and I would make her a cup of tea with a slice of my Gran’s cake.
I rang the bell and Mrs. Philips opened the door and was very
surprised to see me standing there. She invited me in and after a while I
explained the reason that bought me there and informed her that Mum and Dad
when everything money wise had been dealt with would be moving out of the
family home as they were in the process of getting a mortgage.
This came as a complete surprise to her, the reason for this I explained was because Dad was having problems getting the mortgage due to being self-employed so until Dad could get a bridging loan my parents wanted to keep it quiet.
After being offered a cup of tea I then explained to the Landlady about my circumstances how with two young babies having to struggle daily up and down the stairs carrying them and then the pram up to the fourth floor, plus as I only had 2 rooms with oven on the landing it wasn’t an ideal place to bring up children.
She listened intently then asked the 64 dollar question was I able to take on the rent of £2.00 a week plus rates, with my fingers crossed behind my back I replied, “Yes of course that was perfectly alright as my husband had a decent job” (Wages at that time were £6 a week If you were lucky to be in employment).
So at the age of 21 my husband and I moved back into my childhood home. My father was furious as he had promised to speak to the Landlady when the time was right to ask on behalf of my younger sister and her future husband (who were getting married within weeks) That could they take over the rent book?
My husband and I moved in with our babies with a very small
amount of furniture.
Due to only having 2 rooms, we slept on a put-u-up in the front
room while the children slept in the back room.
My father thought he would have the last word and had given the removal men instructions that not one item of curtain, carpet light bulbs were to be left in the house.
Not to be outdone I went to my aunt and uncle who lived a bus ride away explained the situation and they willingly gave us a proper bed, rugs, curtains and anything else useful with my uncle making sure that electrics etc were safe for all of us.
Sadly my gran had died several years before but I soon got to
know my new neighbours.
The bedroom floors had no covering so I placed blankets on the floor and nailed them down until one day I could afford better.
The pleasure I had had putting that rent book down in front of
my father saying that if my sister and husband wanted they could move in on the
top floor. Even then he tried to lay down the law saying my sister was not used
to living upstairs so therefore he suggested strongly that my husband and I
move upstairs and my sister and new husband take over the ground and first
floor, unbelievably!!!
So I told him that I was quite happy for my sister and her husband
to move in upstairs.
I won the day and my sister and new husband moved in as arranged after their honeymoon. Rent sorted WHEW!!
My 2 children became three by then loved the freedom of the garden and I lived there 8 years before I was on the move again. (My sister had moved out to Harlow New Town within a year so I had to find another way to help pay the rent, through word of mouth, I took on a lodger.
All was well in the beginning until the lodger bought a friend of his from the pub. I came back from work, and found downstairs had been trashed and the boxes containing Rent, Rates, Electricity which I kept in my wardrobe had been broken into. (That’s how we paid our bills weekly banks were for the rich people, that was what was generally thought)
The lodger was the only person that I could think of as nothing
like that had happened before while he had been living there it had to be his
friend so I went upstairs and told my lodger that I suspected his friend, and that
I blamed him for bringing that person back to my home. Then I asked him to pack
his belongings and go. Before I called the police. The theft was indirectly his
fault from allowing that low life in. He even stole the children’s Christmas presents
from under the tree.
He said he would reimburse me for whatever had been taken but I
told him no! He had to go.
So there I was a slight slip of a girl at the tender age of 22 evicting a giant of a man (6ft 3” actually) out of my home saying i never wanted to see or hear from him again.
I then decided I would have to take a cleaning job, so one came up at the local school which fitted in nicely with my children’s nursery/school times. Up at 4am, I walked to work, back at 7am in time to get the children ready for school and then back again for work from 6 till 8 pm.
I survived and furnished my home and had Lino laid (carpets were beyond my pocket).
Several years later unfortunately my marriage broke down, I had lost all respect for him.
My ex-husband if you notice is not mentioned much and the reason
being he was incapable of keeping a job longer than a few months due to
lateness and laziness, once the children arrived.
I came to the conclusion I would be better off without him.
After my divorce, which thank goodness the Law Society had just passed a law that made it easier for the ordinary person to get adivorce.
One day a friend and I were having a long chat about leaving
You may wonder why Hornchurch. Both my friend and I were
beginning to get disillusioned with the way
One afternoon when our boys were out playing in my back garden,
we made a pact that if we moved it would be together. My friend went an bought
the Evening Standard well know for advertising flats to let, and we scoured the
pages hoping to find rental accommodation outside London but as neither of us
could agree where, we used a pin and stuck it into the paper and said where it
landed was where we would go together.
The pin came down on Hornchurch which neither of us had any idea
where it was, so we got the children ready stuck babies in prams and went to
W.H.Smith’s where we found a map (neither of us could afford to buy the book)
so I kept the children quiet while my friend looked through the pages and came
to the page showing where Hornchurch was located and found it was near Romford.
Although neither of us could drive we felt “yes”, that’s the place we want to bring up our boys. Although it took several months to work out where we could get the key money, it was the costly sum of £100 a small fortune then. I bit the bullet and went hand in glove to my mother and asked her to loan me the money, promising to pay it back within 6 months.
I arrived in Hornchurch with my children, who were over the moon
with all the open green spaces. Although my eldest boys not realising the
difference between private and public stretch of green had climbed over a wall
and went scrumping thinking that was part of the park.
It was a terrible struggle at first but with the help of my Mum who had ignored my Dads instructions that she was not to do anything to help, as in his words, “I made my bed now I must lie on it,” strange words!!
Four years on, I was moving again.
Another chapter in my life opened up when I met an old school friend, we dated for some time and eventually we married, and moved back to Highgate London. He was a builder and all his business connections were there.
This is just a very short interpretation of moving home.
Copyright Barbara Thomas
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