My grandma, Jane Bagshaw, met my grandad Robert Bell at a celebration of Queen Victoria’s Diamond Jubilee, on Tuesday June 15th 1897 at 3 o’clock at Serlby Park, Nottinghamshire. He was then aged 19, working as second coachman to the Galways at Serlby. Jane, a domestic servant was 14.
After living in Sheffield, the couple retired to Vine Cottage, Sutton-cum-Lound, near Retford, Nottinghamshire in the 1950s.
As you might guess from the photograph of them, standing amongst the hollyhocks in front of the cottage, they were the kind of grandparents that you might encounter in a children’s story.
Taking my cue from a prompt on the Start Writing Fiction course that I took this autumn, I’ve recalled some of the features of Vine Cottage, as I remember them from my childhood, from the late 1950s to the early 1960s, when they left the cottage and moved to a bungalow at the other end of the village.
Grandma’s Cupboard
The prompt on the fiction course was to write about ‘Grandma’s Cupboard’, so let’s start with the shelves in the narrow scullery at the back of the cottage.
Grandma lined the shelves with newspaper, cutting a decorative zig-zag on its trailing edge. My father saved copies of The Times for her. At that time it was a broadsheet consisting almost entirely of text so it gave the shelves a more uniform effect than her own Weekly News, a popular tabloid. She always saved The Weekly News for me because I liked the cartoons in it. And they would sometimes also pass on a copy of the Salvation Army’s newsletter, which featured a comic strip of The Adventures of Black Bob, featuring a hill shepherd and his faithful border collie.
She’d also save tea cards for me, which I still have in a box in the attic. In a recent post, I featured the ‘Why is the Sea Salty’ card from the Lyons Tea What do you Know? series from 1957 (see link below). She even saved Scott’s Porridge Oats packets for me. These featured a cut-out scene on the back. I remember one depicting the sixteen-year old hero of the Battle of Jutland, Jack Cornwell VC, standing at his post on HMS Chester.
Yorkshire Range
More recycling: grandma’s tea caddy was a Lyle’s Golden Syrup tin, worn and faded through years of use.
There was just one cold tap in the house, at the kitchen sink in the scullery, fitted with a green rubber swirl to direct the flow.
There was no electric kettle and no hob, so the kettle sat on an iron bracket in front of the coal fire in the Yorkshire range. I’ve drawn the kettle with string wrapped around the handle to act as insulation but as it was an open fire, I think that it was more likely that grandma used a pot holder, a square of quilted material which would have hung on a hook by the range.
The Yorkshire range included an oven, which would be fine for joints and Yorkshire puddings but when grandma needed to put a pan on, it was time to get out the brass primus stove. Grandad would fill it with methylated spirits and pump it up ready for lighting with a match.
A meal at grandma and grandad’s would typically finish with a steam pudding, such as Queen of Puddings or, my father’s favourite, treacle pudding.
Also in a bowl, grandma’s homemade brawn, which consisted of offcuts of meat set in jelly. Grandma and grandad were once given a piglet, the runt of the litter which had been bullied by the other piglets. They raised the piglet, Billy, in a pen on grandad’s allotment across the road. When Billy’s time came and he was slaughtered, grandma used every cut from the animal. Billy had a deformed leg as a result of a fight with another piglet and my mum remembered that the healed-up injury was still visible in one of the legs of pork that he provided. Brawn was traditionally made from meat cut from the head of an animal.
The Kitchen Table
A solid kitchen table stood in the centre of the living room. Between meals it was covered by a heavy red table cloth, tasselled around the edges.
I’m going back a long way with these memories, to a time when my brother Bill and I were small enough to go exploring under the table. An intriguing object for us to roll about down there was a saggy footrest in a heavy red material.
Once you start pulling at a thread of memory, it’s surprising how many details can come back to you, but I wonder how reliable my memory is after all these years. I’d drawn a leatherette table cover, which would have been typical at that time. They’d normally be hidden beneath the table cloth, but I’m not really sure that grandma used them to protect her table.
Link
Glorious Jubilee, when Robert met Jane.
Why is the Sea Salty?, Lyons tea card
There was no fridge but high on the “scullery” wall was a wooden box with a fine mesh door to keep out flies, which I think was a meat safe. The cupboard was always stocked with jars of marmalade, made from Seville oranges every January, and homemade lemon curd. Even when we called unexpectedly the larder always brimmed with the ingredients for a substantial meal.
I’d forgotten that but when you mention lemon curd, I can picture a jar with a small label with grandma’s handwriting on it.