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Growing Up In Feltwell in the 1950s & 60s – 1. Munson’s Place
I was 9 months old when, in November 1950 my family moved into the first phase of Munson’s Place. We occupied the 3rd house from the end (No 16) which was renumbered No 50 after completion of the second, larger phase (and since renumbered again and renamed to its original Munson’s Lane). The houses were modern, well built, dry and given the complete lack of central heating or any insulation in the roof space, relatively warm – at least in the living room where a coal and coke fire would burn the winter evenings. Some houses were built with a modern cream or black enamelled iron open range with a “back boiler” which the range heated for all hot water supplies; while others, including ours, had a coal fired cream Rayburn. Windows of course were single glazed in metal frames and those intricate patterns of “Jack Frost” ice crystals on the inside of morning window panes were a common sight in winter.
The sitting room also had an open fire which was lit for special occasions. A few days before Christmas, we would post messages to Father Christmas to be carried up the chimney by the fire’s heat. The kitchen (scullery to some!) had no fitted cupboards and little storage space other than a walk-in pantry with a cold slab for its lowest shelf for storing butter and milk (full cream and non-homogenised of course), or the bowl of dripping left over from the Sunday roast. On the floor was a small “meat safe” cupboard with a metal mesh front to keep the flies out. We had no refrigerator until 1961.
The sink was a deep white “butler” sink over which was a hot and cold tap, with a single wooden draining board. Crazily, the electric kettle stood on the wet draining board and as fabric flexes frayed over time, at least on two occasions small amounts of electricity escaped into the body of the poor soul who happened to touch the side of the draining board! In the early days, ordinary soap powder such as Daz or Omo was used for washing up – washing up liquid was considered a luxury until about 1960. About then, the entire estate received a free Fairy Liquid sample about a third the size of the old cylindrical bottle: we boys soon emptied the entire contents into a mug so we could use the plastic bottles as water pistols. Heavily promoted on the new Anglia television channel, washing up liquid soon caught on.
If no fire had been lit then the kettle had to provide the hot water for washing up and a separate white enamel bowl was placed inside the sink to economise on water. I do not recall any form of electric immersion heater and when more hot water was needed, such as when youngest sister and I were having our weekly bath together, the kettle provided a quick top up. There was no shower of course. It is hard to imagine now having a bath in wintertime in an unheated room: the big open towel mother held up to wrap us in when we climbed out of the bath was very welcome and a hot-water bottle in bed, essential. Condensation was always a problem when rooms were so cold and not helped by the paraffin heaters employed in wintertime which gave off vast amounts of water vapour. Mother kept a little green “oil stove” in the kitchen for emergency heating and also for boiling eggs on for tea. I can still recall sitting at the little kitchen table and looking into the living room through the hot, rising fumes of the oil stove, which wrinkled everything in my vision.
In the outhouse off the open porch by the back door was a wash house with its own deep sink and a “copper” - a deep metal bowl set in concrete and capable of taking several sheets and nappies – heated by a fire beneath so that cottons could be boiled. This old technology would soon be obsolete and the later main phase of Munson’s Place did not include such facilities. In any case, by the mid 1950s mother had a simple electric “Hoover” top-loader washing machine. It had its own heater and was filled by buckets of water from the kitchen tap. A simple revolving paddle wheel on one side churned the water but also tied up every item into a big wet tangle. At the end of the wash a rubber tube on the side enabled the water to be emptied back into the bucket. The machine did have a mangle for squeezing the water out of sheets, though a lot fell onto the quarry-tiled kitchen floor.
We had a square of carpet in the living room surrounded by a perimeter of linoleum (“lino”). An imitation wood parquet design was popular for this. Lino was used extensively throughout the rest of the house, especially in bedrooms. The staircase had a single “runner” of carpet up the middle with the risers and treaders either painted or varnished. When small I loved to slide down feet first but on my stomach, bumping down each step and unwittingly using my hands as a brake. Once I tried it head first and, out of control, made painful contact at the bottom with the front door. I never did it again.
Rooms had a single, ceiling light though my sisters’ bedroom also had a bedside lamp. Walls were quite bare. An electric drill was still a rarity in the private home: a timber “picture rail” fixed horizontally around the room some 18” (450mm) below the ceiling allowed pictures to be hung from it on unsightly strings or chains. These rails still exist in a lot of old houses of course and extending the white ceiling emulsion down to the picture rail, creates more reflected light.
Dustbins were emptied every fortnight: “dust” because of the open fires and “bins” because families needed two, which were about the same capacity as modern wheelie bins. Full bins were heavy and smelly and needed 2 people to lift to the road though the men would often walk into back yards of old ladies and carry bins on their bent backs to the refuse lorry. The men wore heavy leather protective tabards and they had to lift each bin manually over the fixed tailgate some 7ft above the ground, and empty the contents into the vast rubbish pile within.
As car ownership increased, the Council demanded that driveway openings should have gates. Our neighbour installed nice dark green purpose made steel gates. My father secured an old wooden bed: the head and foot boards of which consisted of vertical wooden slats within wide timber frames and looked quite like gates. He did not bother fitting hinges but just nailed them permanently open, to posts he sunk in the required locations. A father of 6 had little spare cash.
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