In My Grandmother's House.

[LastGoldenDaysOfSummer]

My Welsh grandparents lived in a large terraced house on a steep hill. The houses were built around the turn of the century. There was a front parlour, a sitting room, a kitchen and a scullery downstairs and an outside toilet. Two huge bedrooms and a bathroom upstairs.

I was describing it to OH and a memory suddenly came back. There was a power cut over the Christmas period when I was very small and my grandfather lit the gas mantles that I hadn't know existed until then. I hadn't realised that houses were lit by gas until electricity became widely available.

They gave off a lovely glow and, at my request, we used them often, even after the power was restored.

My grandfather was the organist at the church and there was a baby grand piano that nearly filled the parlour. All his children learned to play the piano on that. And we used to sing carols around it at Christmas time.

When my grandfather retired he had the house rewired and the gas mantles taken away.

Any other memories of grandparents' homes.

My Nan and Pop didn't actually speak to each other during my life (he was a bigamist she refused to say a word to him) but they grew loads of food and had chickens so successfully they pretty much fed our street during the miners strike.
The smell of spekulas biscuits sp? and rabbit pie were my favourite things. The skins drying behind the backboiler. I liked her special ciggies too.
still do

My grandparents were all gone by the time I had memories like this but I'm enjoying reading others.

One grandma: went there for hours every Sunday. Expected to sit there in complete silence while we were ignored. Just used to talk about herself or spread nasty gossip about the neighbours, whilst talking to my mum.
Other grandma: lovely but prob very lonely woman. Used to always give us choice from an old Tupperware box. She would put mints in there too so everything tasted minty! Used to be partial to a mint flavoured Wispa bar though 😂 Then in later years, visiting her in residential homes - she looked so sad/ bored sat in the lounge, until she saw you...then her whole face use to light up in absolute pure joy! She has the most beautiful kind blue eyes, which she passed onto my dad, and then onto me. She used to get super excited about Christmas, even in her 70s and would always sneak a little look at pressies, early, given half the chance. Used to adore her childish enthusiasm at sneakily tearing off a corner of wrapping paper 😆

My grandmother had a "Treasure Tin" it was a large old battered biscuit tin filled with old coins, buttons, puzzles, all sorts of mysterious odds and ends and even bits of old costume jewellery! I loved going into the old dresser and bringing out that tin!!

Whenever I’m in a house in my dreams, it’s always my Grandma’s house fro some reason.

My best memories are sorting the buttons in the button tin, counting up her coppers and then sharing them out between me and my siblings and we were allowed to keep them, the pantry with the little hand held hoover on the wall that we were allowed to hoover with, grandma’s Yorkshire puddings, for some reason under her table cloth she had a cut out piece of carpet underlay left over from when they had the carpets fitted, and grandad’s home made Santa shaped sweetie jar at Christmas.

My worst memory was overhearing my grandma telling her friends that my brother was her favourite grandchild 🙈.

In the hallway my grandfather had a porcelain shire horse with the leather harness on it and everything. I was fascinated by that thing. He also had an outdoor toilet and a coal scuttle, and pictures of trains on the walls.

But the thing I remember the most is the smell. Not unpleasant at all, but my grandfather lived close to a sugarbeet factory and the smell was very distinctive.

I've got my grandmother's button tin! My DD loves playing with it.

My Grandmother’s Houses
Jackie Kay

1
She is on the second floor of a tenement.
From her front room window you see the cemetery.

Her bedroom is my favourite: newspapers
dating back to the War covering every present
she’s ever got since the War. What’s the point
in buying her anything my mother moans.
Does she use it. Does she even look at it.
I spend hours unwrapping and wrapping endless
tablecloths, napkins, perfume, bath salts,
stories of things I can’t understand, words
like conscientious objector. At night I climb
over all the newspaper parcels to get to bed,
harder than the school’s obstacle course. High up
in her bed all the print merges together.

When she gets the letter she is hopping mad.
What does she want with anything modern,
a shiny new pin? Here is home.
The sideboard solid as a coffin.
The newsagents next door which sells
hazelnut toffees and her Daily Record.
Chewing for ages over the front page,
her toffees sticking to her false teeth.

2
The new house is called a high rise.
I play in the lift all the way up to 24.
Once I get stuck for a whole hour.
From her window you see noisy kids
playing hopscotch or home.
She makes endless pots of vegetable soup,
a bit bit of hoch floating inside like a fish.

Till finally she gets to like the hot
running water in her own bathroom,
the wall-to-wall foam-backed carpet,
the parcels locked in her air-raid shelter.
But she still doesn’t settle down;
even at 70 she cleans people’s houses
for ten bob and goes to church on Sundays,
dragging me along to the strange place where the air
is trapped and ghosts sit at the altar.
My parents do not believe. It is down to her.
A couple of prayers. A hymn or two.
Threepenny bit in the collection hat.
A flock of women in coats and fussy hats
flapping over me like missionaires, and that is that,
until the next time God grabs me in Glasgow with Gran.

3
By the time I am seven we are almost the same height.
She still walks faster, rushing me down the High Street
till we get to her cleaning house. The hall is huge.
Rooms lead off like an octopus’s arms.
I sit in a room with a grand piano, top open –
a one-winged creature, whilst my gran polishes
for hours. Finally bored I start to pick some notes,
oh can you wash a sailor’s shirt oh can you wash and clean
till my gran comes running, duster in hand.
I told you don’t touch anything. The woman comes too;
the posh one all smiles that make goosepimples
run up my arms. Would you like to sing me a song?
Someone’s crying my Lord Kumbaya. Lovely, she says,
beautiful child, skin the colour of café au lait.
‘Café oh what? Hope she’s not being any bother.’
Not at all. Not at all. You just get back to your work.
On the way to her high rise I see her
like the hunchback of Notre Dame. Everytime I crouch
over a comic she slaps me. Sit up straight.

She is on the ground floor of a high rise.
From her living-room you see ambulances,
screaming their way to the Royal Infirmary.

My nan and grandad had a wall of clocks. There were cuckoo clocks, normal clocks grandfather clocks. All fancy ones. And when it was on the hour it was so noisy. Think they were a bit eccentric

My Grandmother's house had a scullery for basic tasks, but the centre of the house was the kitchen, dominated by the huge glowering presence of the Simplex Range.

Glittering and shining, it was the household God, and had to be worshipped with applications of blacking and elbow grease.
Sometimes it could be a truculent, temperamental deity, refusing to light, bringing consternation to the congregation.

But Grandma, the Chief Priestess, knew how to appease The One, by administering the Gas Poker! This was a huge lance like object, connected to the gas supply in the scullery by a long hose.

We would all be warned to retreat to the safety of "beside the piano". There would be a loud whoosh with occasional bangs. Then Grandma would sail in, holding aloft the huge flaming torch, the very image of the Statue of Liberty.

She would plunge the incandescent poker into the reluctant coals, and now propitiated, the God would spring into renewed life.

There would be scones for tea.

My nan was terrified of the telephone. It was put in a drawer and Nan would yell to my Grandad to answer it whilst she ran out the room. My Great Grandma lived downstairs in the basement. It was dimly lit and had a series of plate shaped pictures of people's faces which was very creepy to us as kids. She also had a figurine in her bedroom of 'little boy blue' and my little brother was terrifed "the boy would get us"

@FannysSteadiedBuffs

I used to sleep on a (very uncomfortable) army cot in my Grandmother's bedroom. She was diabetic and as this was in the sixties, the room always smelt of surgical spirit. If I get a whiff of that now it takes me straight back to that room.

Ha! My Nan 'didn't believe in phone's mainly because she cleaned in the evening for solicitors and they allowed her to call Holland every Thursday.
She also brought all the paper waste for us to draw on.
We'd read the solicitors letters to each other scandalised

She also loved it when they built a box outside her house.
She learnt English faster so she could nosey.

My grandparents house had four rooms,main room,small kitchen and two bedrooms.14 people loving there.No electricity,no running water.I used to love going to the pump down the road to fetch water.

I remember visiting with a friend when we were adults,one of my Aunts was living in the house then,she only had 5 children!She told my friend the loo was out the back,it was,acres and acres! friend was horrified and didn’t go!They did have a tap in the kitchen though and electricity by then.

My Nainie and Taid lived in a 1930s bungalow, with a little pantry that smelled of grapefruits, and a big aga, and Sea Jade body powder in the bathroom. She wore Kiku perfume and I've still got her last bottle. Mint Imperials and Players are the smell of my Taid. There was a China cabinet in the hall with the fancy tea set in.

My granny was the only person I knew with a deep fat fryer. She'd take me to the fishmonger to pick a piece of fish, then she'd make us breaded fish and proper fried chips for dinner.

She also had a twin tub instead of a front loading washing machine well into the 2000s.

My paternal Nan was tiny, had eleven children & ruled them with a rod of iron until the day she died. She & my Pops lived downstairs in a big house & my uncle & aunt & two children lived upstairs, my aunts used go everyday & cook lunch usually Irish stew for everyone who dropped in throughout the day, she had a front parlour that we were only allowed in at Christmas or if the local priest paid a visit, when my Pops was very ill she allowed him in there to listen to the radiogram, he was a truly gentle soul & she I think probably led him a dogs life.
My maternal Nan, lived in a bungalow with a beautiful well tended garden, my most vivid memory is of the Archers theme tune playing on the radio & everything stopped for that, she had a Brown Betty teapot with a knitted tea cosy, a button tin & always had a bag of humbugs in her apron pocket she was lovely.

My gran lived in a pretty small 2 bed Council house in Glasgow. Nothing special. Apart from she was a bit of a hoarder. So as kids we would love to explore inside the cabinets and cupboards as we would find all sorts of "treasures".

She had a cupboard filled with boxes diaries, she wrote an entry every day for decades. Sometimes she would read us entries - e.g the day we were born. One day she was reading a random entry (we'd name a date and she'd have to read it) and she became very flustered and stopped reading. Naturally we were desperate to know why, so we grabbed it and read it and it said "The engagement is off. There was a terrible argument and A threw the ring at him." That was my parents!! Obviously they got back together at some point as they did get married, but as kids we were scandalised! My poor gran made us swear not to tell our mother we knew. I've never mentioned it but as my mother has a fierce temper and I can just imagine her throwing her engagement ring at my dad

My grandparents lived (my grandma still does!) in a dorma in Wales, and because it was a Dorma, the upstairs was obviously in the roof space. To allow for a bit of storage space, there was a cupboard up there, with two entrances, which made it sort of like a secret passage. I love The Famous Five a lot when I was a child, and used to call it the secret way - even though there was nothing secret about it!

There were lots of little quirks about that house that probably weren't that unusual, but I was a child who'd grown up in an average 3 bed semi with nothing interesting to offer at all, so it was exciting when we stayed here!

for some reason under her table cloth she had a cut out piece of carpet underlay left over from when they had the carpets fitted

Presumably it was to prevent the table being damaged by hot plates or pots and pans.

My grandparents house used to smell of wrights coal tar soap. I have a bar in my cellar I occasionally sniff.. it takes me right back 35 years!

I've got my late grandma's button tin. I spent so much time as a kid playing with the 'treasure chest' 😁

Among my memories are outside loos, the smell of pipe tobacco, and an old (not used anymore at that point) metal bathtub still hanging in an outhouse.

And the twin tub with mangle. My late dad had his hand crushed by his parents mangle.

My grandparents house was a Victorian semi on a busy high street. We could slide down the banisters and play 'cricket' in their long narrow hallway. The front room had sash windows, but everything else was later- 60s probably. Grandad had his chair, grandma's was next to it and in her cupboard, with a sliding door, she kept blackcurrant pastilles, a dictionary, a Bible and an address book which you had to press a button for.

My grandad had a small tin of coloured ball bearings and marbles and we'd play lots of games with them. His understand cupboard was an Aladdin's cave. There was a small bottle of metal polish that smelt amazing. We'd sit and shine pennies up for ages.

Upstairs they had lots of religious art - think Father Ted- with holographic pictures of Jesus in the garden of Gethsemane.

Me and my brother used to always fight over who got to use Blackhandle, the freebie spoon they got with cereal at some point.
Happy days!

My grandparents also had a scullery, it was a little narrow room at the end of the kitchen where they did the washing up in a big sink, and later put a dishwasher which they never used?

Their old house was back up for sale recently, and I looked through all the Rightmove pictures. It was so visceral. Although it had been totally redecorated and modernised of course, I remembered the smell of it so clearly, and all the places where treasures would be hiding. I loved them so much.