Early Years contd.

When I was about three, we were living in a small cottage at No.1 Corley’s Yard, Sopwell Lane, it was tiny - Dad could barely stand upright - and very basic. It is possible that No.1 and its adjoining neighbour No. 2 were at one time stables. There was certainly straw in the loft space, and Sopwell Lane was the main road to London during the ‘Great Coaching Era’. The cottages were approached through a large gated opening, with rooms over, typical of many coaching Inns of the 18th and 19th centuries. Indeed the house next door but one - still standing - is reputed to be an old inn and is probably of Tudor origin with much timber and brick infill, and an overhanging upper storey. And on the opposite side of the road, stands “The Goat” which was definitely a coaching inn. The yard and stables were still there when I was a lad. More about this old pub later. No.1 had two rooms downstairs, a living room and a scullery, and two bedrooms upstairs. The living room had just one small window and a door opening straight onto the yard, a black cast iron range with an oven beside the fire; apart from cooking this oven was also used in winter, to heat up house bricks which when wrapped in old towels warmed the beds. Mum used to hide things such as tinned condensed milk in the oven and sometimes forget they were there, when the fire was lit the milk turned into a toffee like substance much to us kids delight. Lighting was by gas. The smell of a new gas mantle being lit, is still one of my most vivid memories. The scullery also had a gas lamp, together with a stone and brick boiler in the corner, which was heated with coal or wood. This was used for boiling the wash and for heating the water on bath nights. The latter was quite an occasion, involving fetching in the oval tin bath, which lived on a nail on the wall outside in the yard; placing it in front of the range and then carrying in the water from the boiler in buckets or saucepans. Of course after the bath the water had to be bucketed away and the bath replaced on its nail. It was a red letter day, when the family acquired what was known as a ‘Bungalow Bath’. This was a tin or galvanised bath very similar in shape to a modern bath in size and shape, and enabled ones legs to stretch out in comfort.