Share a pic of the house you grew up in and win £100 John Lewis voucher -WINNING PICTURE ANNOUNCED

[RachelMumsnet]

To celebrate the publication of Lisa Jewell's latest book The House We Grew Up In we're inviting you to send in pictures of the house that you grew up in with a short caption.

Whether it's a shot of the exterior or a room indoors, a garden or even piece of furniture or ornament but all pics must be evocative of your childhood. Post your pics up before the end of 22 July, write a short caption, and we'll create a carousel of our favourite ten pics on 23 July. Each person who makes the shortlist of ten will receive a copy of The House We Grew Up in. Author Lisa Jewell will then choose the winning photo from the ten and we'll announce the winner on Thursday 25 July. The winner will receive a £100 voucher for John Lewis.

More about The House We Grew up in by Lisa Jewell

Meet the Bird Family

All four children have an idyllic childhood: a picture-book cottage in a country village, a warm, cosy kitchen filled with love and laughter, sun-drenched afternoons in a rambling garden.

But one Easter weekend a tragedy strikes the Bird family that is so devastating that, almost imperceptibly, it begins to tear them apart.

The years pass and the children become adults and begin to develop their own quite separate lives. Soon it's almost as though they've never been a family at all.

Almost. But not quite.

Because something has happened that will call them home, back to the house they grew up in - and to what really happened that Easter weekend all those years ago.

[Lurleene]

Outside the house I grew up in, playing in the pedal car my grandpa bought me the day I was born and hanging out with Kim, my constant companion. Happy days.

[AandiGreenway]

The house on the right is where I grew up and it looked much different back then as the walls were painted pink. Originally, the woodwork was yellow and white (my mum loved colour). The house was bought by the neighbours and as you can see they painted them to be the same and there is no longer the front garden. The back garden was 100 ft long and we had a lot of fun in it and our dad grew all our veg and we had numerous fruit trees. We also had chickens which every morning we would go searching for the eggs which were delicious for breakfast. Of course back then, we never fully appreciated what it was like to have our own grown fruit and veg. :)

[Lioninthesun]

This was the house my parents bought when they moved out of London and I lived here for 3 years and then every other weekend with my mum when they divorced and sent me to boarding school. Mixed emotions about it, as I remember some horrific arguments between my parents. Definitely the most harrowing setting of my childhood, but the only one I spent time as a 'family' in.
However I also remember looking for shark teeth in the gravel, laying on the hammock in the big garden, helping mum make the pond, having the attic to myself as a playroom and enjoying going to latchkey up the road when mum worked too late to collect me from school.
It had a lovely stained glass window in the upstairs loo and a small square hole just inside the front door where the old bell pull wires would have run which was perfect for keeping keys in. Mum also added the conservatory at the back so she could sore her piano and would play it while I was poking things with sticks in the garden.

[MrsPnut]

We lived here until I was 7, and it still has so many memories. This is the house that has Fred and Mary living across the road, they were an older couple who used to take me on trips regularly. We used to sing if you want to know the time ask a policeman and a song about the sequence of the traffic lights.
Next door to us was Mrs Jagear, who I was leaning out of the window talking to about my grandma coming to stay when I fell out onto the concrete step below. In my mum's haste to take me to the hospital, she left my bag sister asleep in her pram and had to turn back to get her.

Louise and Michelle were our friends that lived down the street, I remember them having Whooping cough and we were one of the few friends who could go and play because we'd had the vaccination.
I also remember the street party we had for Charles and Diana's wedding and I had to sit at a table on our drive with my grandma and my sister because I had german measles at the time.

[mrscumberbatch]

We moved houses a few times when I was a child, the one constant was the family business (Jewellers...not a glamorous one though- a proper working one!) .

It makes me laugh to think that all these people coming into buy luxury items over the years and I have had my nappy changed (in an emergency) on this very counter. I grew up behind the counter, playing with the window dressings and changing watch batteries...

This picture of my DD and my DF in the shop gives me that lovely homely feeling. It's a bit like a time travel scene as nothing much has changed in the 26 years between it being me behind the counter and now it is her.

[cather]

Here is the farmhouse I grew up in. Sadly it was demolished earlier this year as it was very damp and needed a lot of work doing to it. The floors were very uneven and all the furniture had blocks of wood underneath to keep them level! We had an ancient Aga that everyone always made a bee line for and I remember coming down in the morning and putting my clothes on it to warm them up before I got dressed!

[flapjacks]

This was taken on my 3rd birthday in the house I grew up in. We always used to have chocolate teacakes & malt loaf with butter on as a treat! Mum made me a heart shaped cake because my birthday is Feb 14th ...

I love this photo not only because of the occasion, but also due to the décor. It shows I'm a real 70's lass!!!

[Susandani]

This is my house where I lived until I was 14 in 1983. It had a huge back garden where we spent all our time climbing trees and making dens. I always thought it looked like a house a child would draw - 4 windows with the door in the middle! My bedroom was the top right and I used to sit and look out the window in the night watching foxes! It has been knocked down now to make a road into a small estate with twenty starter homes built in the garden.

[VivaLeBeaver]

I was an older teenager when I lived here. Only briefly but happy memories of an idyllic time. Lots of sun, friends, horses, dogs, beautiful countryside.

[NellieJones]

Me and my sisters with our great grandmother Christmas 1976. We moved into this house in 1974 and our parents moved out in 1999. Great gran was born in 1883 and lived to be 95. I was so lucky to know her for so long and she is probably responsible for my passion for history.

[MrsHelsBels74]

Longest I ever lived in a house was about 5 years so I don't really feel like I grew up in one house.

[HamletsSister]

Very sad that I have nothing to contribute. My homes were many and varied but none that could be photographed. How about a "pen picture".

One was cramped as we had been rather suddenly and forcibly downsized. My mother refused to get rid of the bigger furniture we had before the move so there were lots of sharp edges and cramped corners. I was initially, through lack of space, put in a caravan in the drive but, after a bout of food poisoning, getting scared of the drunks passing and the onset of winter I was promoted to the other half of my mother's bed.

It stunk of fags - cheap ones where the smell is mostly of burned paper, not tobacco. My sisters ruled the roost - I was older but had been away from home for some years so was rather in awe of their street smarts and friends. I took up smoking and worked long hours in various places, longing for the day when I would start University and be able to escape again. It was in an expensive part of the South, making its chipped paint and "rented" appearance stand out a long way.


Will that do?

[almostwitty]

This is where I grew up, where as a young lad I'd lie on the red curvy thing by the front door and gaze up at the bright blue sky, wondering what might be.

When I went back there a couple of years ago, the windows were boarded up and the legend "Kevin has AIDS" was scrawled on one of the boards.

Nice.

[StepAwayFromTheEcclesCakes]

I will try that again
the garden of the house I grew up in, years of fun on the swing, a rare pic of me and DB not fighting

[Kazzywazzy]

Me and Tiddles on the mat at what was my home at Lincoln until I was 9, looks like it was winter as the fireguard is up and I have tights and what looks like a Christmas jumper on !

[RunningKatie]

This is the garden of the house we lived in in Norfolk. I have fond memories of myself and my big brother letting ourselves out of the back door one morning to play on our new swings. Our dad had to chase us back indoors in his dressing gown as it was only 7am!

Years later, we always used to drive past the house to say hello when we went on holiday to the north Norfolk coast. My bedroom had some bright circus wallpaper in it, and I remember sitting at the bottom of the stairs with my Mum ringing my Dad at work asking him to bring my teddy bear back from our new house.

My brother died 3 years ago now and looking at pictures of the house makes me smile still but sad that I don't have anyone to reminisce about silly childhood things any longer.

[thesoupdragon44]

Here is the house that I remember growing up in. We moved to the coast from London when I had just turned 4 and I don't remember London at all. Growing up with gardens parks and fields summers were spent outside, in the garden in paddling pools and on bikes. Summers seemed so long, and hot and full of fun with my brother building camps and staying with my Nan! I wonder if my son will have the same fond memories of his home when he is older?

[pamish]

Here's our prefab in Barkingside. It served us well from 1946 to 1954 when we got a council house. Prefabs were great, everything ready-installed, they were just dropped off lorries onto concrete bases. Is it time for them to come back to solve our current crisis?

[catwomanga]

I lived in my old family home from the age of seven. When we moved in, the previous owners left us a really cool fifties' tin dolls' house. The family moved out after my mum died.
A few years later, I was at a works do and got talking to a lovely lady I'd only known to say hello to. Turns out her sister lived in the house before I did, and the dolls' house I'd loved so much had been hers!
When her son told me all about the fun he had with his cousins there, it was profound to think we had shared childhood experiences. I missed that house so much that when it came up for rent a decade later, I had to go and see it (for some kind of 'closure' I guess.) The new owners had done so much to my old house. They got rid of our wonderful vegetable garden, which broke my heart, but in its place was a beautiful summer house.
I really missed that vegetable garden. I loved picking and eating all the raw veg and scrumping the raspberries and gooseberries before the birds had them all. When I had a family of my own, it inspired us to create one in our own forever house. My daughter now picks at our herbs and veg, just like I did when I was her age!

[BogoPogo]

This is me on my beloved swing in front of the house where I grew up, which my Dad was still building at the time.

I think we were still living in a caravan on site at that point. I used to terrify my parents by climbing on the scaffolding (health and safety - what's that?) so they bought me the swing for my 3rd birthday in the hope that would be safer. Which it would've been if Dad had ever got round to hammering in the pegs that anchored the legs to the ground...

It was right by the sea and in the summer all you could hear was the crash of waves and the chatter of happy children. When it wasn't pissing down, obviously.

[Mummymoneypenny]

I walk past this house that I grew up in, in Beer Devon, every morning when I walk my dog. Sadly it's a holiday cottage now as are a lot of the houses near the beach, but the owners did keep the topiary boat shaped hedges which my grandad sculpted. Many happy memories & what I would do now to have a house with this view.

[Smallbrownbird]

I didn't really understand the phrase 'house proud' until I looked at this photograph taken in the mid-sixties (that's my big brother) and thought about the war-bombed, dirty and neglected city my parents had grown up in. My parents were so proud of this house, shown by how much colour they threw at every space in it and outside it!