NextBackI was born at 38, Orchard Street in December 1947. It was where my Gran & Grandad lived (my Dad's Mum & Dad) . There was no bathroom or no mains electricity. We had a wireless but that was powered by a battery charged up at Mr. Bennet's who owned the grocery shop next door. Lighting was by gas, cooking was by a gas cooker in the scullery but the old black range was fully in place and in full working order. The front downstairs room was only for “Sunday Best”. Family always came in the back through the communal entry three or four houses down.
My other Gran, Mum's Mum, was married to the Blacksmith, Mr. Rose who lived at 145 Ipsley Street. (Where the bus stop is now), with the smithy next door. His son, Sam and workhand, Bert, operated the smithy in my time and I can remember seeing a carthorse being shod there. Mr. Rose was Gran's second husband, her first husband had died of cancer in 1933, close to my mum's 11th birthday. She remembers seeing him laid out peacefully, and for the first time free from pain, on her eleventh birthday.
The family were faced with £300 of household bills. Gran paid it off by acting as a midwife. (She had seven children of her own), nurse (from experience with her first husband) and in “laying out” the dead. Mum at fourteen helped her lay out a man she had been nursing, “old Man Hobday”
