大象传媒

Country Living

Our cottage at Boyton was rented from the Estate and the manager at that time was a Mr Jakins. He wore a Trilby hat, leather gaiters and had a glass eye. His son Peter was a Flt Lt in the R.A.F. and he was very proud of this. Unfortunately, although he survived the actual war, I believe he was lost on a flight from St. Mawgan in Cornwall to Almaza in Egypt.
My parents had rented the cottage from the estate, on the understanding that after the war we would vacate it as it would be required for an estate worker. Boyton still had only basic amenities such as an outside toilet. We had to empty the bucket and bury the contents when it was full. Our water came from a well. We had to use a bucket on a rope for every drop of drinking water. Water for washing clothes and baths could be taken from the river, it was quicker. (The river ran through our back garden, there were stepping stones originally, so that you could walk across. My father eventually built a light weight wooden bridge.) We had electricity, so this made things easier for my mother when cooking; she did not have to rely on the old range.
To heat water for the weekly wash and bath, we used what was called an out-house boiler. It was a solid fuel fire with a large half oval shaped copper bowl housed above it; the whole unit was encased in a brick construction with a fire door, where we put the wood in to feed the fire. As Monday was usually wash day, it was our job as children to collect wood from the local woods on Sunday, enough for our mother to heat the water for the washing and at sometime during the week heat water for our bath. (We only had a bath once a week.)As there wasn鈥檛 a bathroom in our house we used a long tin bath that was usually put in front of the living room fire and then filled up with water from the copper, it had to be carried in by the bucketful.
bath and installed it in the out house. (There wasn鈥檛 anything like central heating, in winter it was into the bath a quick wash and then out, to stand in front of the living room fire to dry off.) Now the water could be easily transferred from the boiler to the bath and when we had finished we pulled out the bath plug and the water flowed away into the river, as this is how my father had plumbed it up.
AMUSMENT.
RECREATION.
ENJOYMENT.

In the holidays and when ever we had any spare time, (we were never bored, in fact there was never enough spare time,) we went on extremely long walks or explorations as we called them. Our legs took us to Stockton Woods and Great Ridge, it would take all day. Our packed lunch or picnic was usually pretty basic; jam sandwiches or bread and a hard boiled egg. No lemonade, just a bottle of cold water.

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