This week I had a visit from the two most lovely ladies who live in the village. Jane is 84 and her sister Lou is 76. They have lived here forever and grew up in the farmhouse over the road. They were great friends with the two young girls who lived here then. They would have been Tommy Eade’s younger sisters and the daughters of Charles and Honor who took over the house in 1943. I mentioned them in my last House History post here. They had lots of stories of life here as young girls which were utterly fascinating.
They spoke very highly of the Nanny and Mr Simmonds who was the groom. All the girls had ponies and Mr Simmonds would take them all out to ride up the Wrekin. He would spend his Sunday cleaning tack in the tack room next to an open fire. They also remembered what they called the schoolhouse. This is the room I always assumed was a gardener’s lodge of some sort but they used it as a school room. They remembered the open fire and that there was a gramophone in there. They recalled Nanny and Mr Simmonds showing them how to dance. I can almost hear the giggling now!
There were indeed cows in the barn that I spoke about in my last post. And pigs in the orchard just as I thought. Lou remembers milking the cows, there were five, and she showed me where they put the milk. The calves were in this little building next door.
The main entertainment they found though was spying on people. It seemed to be a great sport. Tommy’s younger sisters would spy on him from the front window whenever he took out a girlfriend. The vicar (who was a bit of a drinker) was also a good target. The dare was to sneak into his kitchen and steal an apple from the bowl on his table. I wonder if he ever knew!
They also solved the mystery of the nursery key for me! If you follow me on Instagram you may remember I found this key marked nursery but couldn’t find a door to fit it. It turns out that the main drawing room was what they called the nursery as its where all the children lived and played. And ta-da the key fits. The rooms upstairs that I had thought were a nursery were Nanny’s bedroom and the two rooms on either side were where the girls slept.
The room next to the kitchen used to be divided into a corridor leading out to the back and a small room at the bottom of the servant’s stairs. There were portraits all along the walls and all the children thought it was creepy. The small room next to the kitchen was known as the flower room. I’m guessing where they used to cut and arrange flowers for the house. Neither Jane nor Lou ever remembers the servant’s stairs being there. It’s strange because Lord Barnard had never seen them either. Maybe they were closed off for some reason.
Jane was born in 1939 and so remembers some of the later war years. All the houses here were full with so many people coming and going. 20 people lived in her farmhouse at one point. One night she was woken by her mother and told she had to get out of bed. A plane had crashed in the field nearby and the recovered pilot was in shock. He needed a warm bed to rest in. Jane can’t remember where she ended up sleeping but the pilot was collected in the morning!
Before the Eade’s arrived in 1943 this house was rented to the Coopers. They were a family from Birmingham who came here for a few years to escape the bombings. They had cinemas in Birmingham and I believe it was most likely Thomas Cooper who built three cinemas in Blackheath. The Pavilion in 1912, the Kings in 1923 and the Rex in 1938. (There was a great boom in cinemas in Birmingham before the war and they were very popular.) The Coopers lived here with some relations as well as a number of others who came and went. They brought with them a cook who married someone local and stayed in the area. Jane’s recollections conjure up a house full of people and so many comings and goings. People were lodged wherever they could find space and there were often young families who had lost husbands in the war who needed help. While we tend to think of evacuees being placed at homes in the country we forget about all the movement that happened as people went to stay with friends and relations. It was a very unsettled time as everyone tried their best to manage.
I can’t thank Jane and Lou enough for sharing their memories with me. I really hope I get to see more of them and hear more of their tales, I could have talked to them for days. Lou is still friendly with Caroline who lived here so maybe we can organise a visit and I can get to hear even more of the stories. What I still don’t know is when the house was built or extended. It seems that apart from a few minor alterations as mentioned with the room next to the kitchen the house was pretty much the same as it is now. And so I will keep following the story backwards. Next, we get to the Interwar years and some rather interesting characters.
Sounds like a fab time listening to their stories and you found the room the match the key 👍🎉 They sound like great characters 💕
Love the History! Thank you for sharing.
We are traveling to your area in October. Very excited as it will be our first time in England.