Keith & grandfather James Turnbull
c1938 |
Life here was very different but fun. Our Nan's semi-detached
house at 2 Bridge Road had less home comforts than Portsmouth. There was no
electricity and cooking and heating came from a coal range fire. Downstairs it
had gas lamps for lighting and a candle for going upstairs to bed. Water was
from an outside communal tap with next door and the toilet was up the garden.
She was a keen vegetable gardener and thanks to her it is a pleasure that I
have enjoyed all my life. Although she was a loving and kind person she was
very strict. Children had to know their place. In her younger days she had been
a midwife and hence was well known in the village. Our grandfather did not
enjoy good health, due to asthma, that led to his death when we we quite young.
Their house was over the road from the Emsworth mill pond around which he would
take us for walks and helped us to catch shrimps. How long we stayed cannot
remembered. The house has since been replaced with a modern one.
The
final stage to Westbourne was to live with our mother's sister, Aunt Jude, who
lived at Mary Vale at bottom of Monks Hill. Her husband, Uncle Len, was a
gunner in the Royal Navy and was away for most of the war. The neighbours
through the wall were Mr & Mrs Cressweller, whom we called uncle & aunt
as was the polite custom to call adults. The stay with our aunt could have been
due to compulsory billeting for evacuees. Better to have family members than
strangers and be paid too.
Again it cannot be remembered how long we
were there before my parents and my sister Mary took up temporary residence
with the Southwell family who also lived at Commonside, just before the
junction with River Street.
The next home in Westbourne was a former
workhouse now called The Grange. |