Early Years

We remained at Longden End from the ages of four until eleven virtually having our own little oasis, where nobody interfered and we were able to more or less, do what we liked.( quite frankly very few people new of our existence )  As previously mentioned, my mother had to work  in order to support us. This meant that apart from being left for long periods of time, whereby we could get up to all kinds of mischief,. we had to do our fair share of household chores. These included fetching water, we had a set of two milk churns mounted on wheels and once a day we would take these churns down to the brook and fill them with water.The toilet was a large bucket which was situated in  an outhouse underneath a wooden board, this board had a large hole in it. This acted as a seat for when we had to answer the call of nature. Well of course eventually the bucket became full and needed to be emptied. My brother Peter and I would then take the bucket to a point some way from the house. Dig a hole and tip the excreta  into it and bury it. Other duties were the lighting and maintenance of the house fires, and the weekly wash. The house had a large cast iron grate in which was situated to the right hand side of the  fire bars.an oven.and on the left hand side a water a water tank with a hot plate on top. This was our only source of heat, all cooking, boiling of water was undertaken here. I mentioned house fires the other fire was needed when doing the weekly wash. To the left of the fire grate was situated a large copper.this would be filled with water a fire would be lit underneath and the water boiled. The washing would be placed in to the copper  and a punch would be used to pummel the washing.. A Punch is likened to a three legged milking stool with a long handle attached . This would be used to agitate the water,like the action of a washing machine.    .