Inside Your Nan's House — Everything That Was There

Every one of us had a house we went to on a Sunday and never lived in. Nan's house had no year. It looked the same in 1965 as it did in 1985, with the same clock on the mantelpiece, the same smell of polish in the hall and the same tin of buttons for keeping us quiet. This is a walk through that house, room by room, in the order we moved through it as children: the front door and the aspidistra in the porch, the front room kept for best, the two chairs by the fire, the caddy and the biscuit tin, the lavatory down the yard for the nans who still had one, grandad's shed, the stairs and her wardrobe, the spare room at night, and Sunday tea at four with a coin pressed into our hand at the door. Along the way: why the antimacassars were on the chairs, what the tap on the barometer was for, how many homes really had an outside lavatory in 1967 and 1971, why so much of nan's furniture dated from her wedding and the Utility scheme, why the blue Danish biscuit tin belongs to the later memories, and how the coin she gave us is the one thing in the house that tells us the year of our visit. Sources: https://brentfordandchiswicklhs.org.u... https://www.gracesguide.co.uk/Mansion... https://assets.publishing.service.gov... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clean_A... https://herbaria.plants.ox.ac.uk/bol/... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Keep_th... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Big... https://yougov.com/en-gb/articles/519... https://welearnwelsh.com/words/welsh-... https://www.britishmuseum.org/collect... https://www.sciencedirect.com/science... https://www.worldwidewords.org/ww-ant... https://www.gracesguide.co.uk/Rowland... https://victorianweb.org/mt/dbscott/2... https://www.whipplemuseum.cam.ac.uk/e... https://www.dsl.ac.uk/entry/snd/sndns284 https://www.nts.org.uk/stories/why-we... https://assets.publishing.service.gov... https://api.parliament.uk/historic-ha... https://www.budgerigarsociety.com/his... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sparkie... https://www.batterseabus.co.uk/flying... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Staffor... https://www.dsl.ac.uk/entry/snd/wallie https://www.northeastmuseums.org.uk/s... https://emuseum.aberdeencity.gov.uk/o... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Royal_D... https://www.tea.co.uk/tea-paraphanalia https://www.tea.co.uk/the-history-of-... https://www.countrylife.co.uk/food-dr... https://theconversation.com/why-brita... https://www.readingmuseum.org.uk/onli... https://huwbeynon.com/wp-content/uplo... https://www.1900s.org.uk/mangle.htm https://assets.publishing.service.gov... https://www.if.org.uk/2013/03/15/how-... https://api.parliament.uk/historic-ha... https://api.parliament.uk/historic-ha... https://sheffielder.net/2020/04/02/iz... https://www.countrylife.co.uk/gardens... https://www.worldwidewords.org/qa-pof... https://api.parliament.uk/historic-ha... https://api.parliament.uk/historic-ha... https://www.dezeen.com/2014/05/11/50-... https://www.historic-uk.com/CultureUK... https://www.thenovium.org/article/339... https://www.royalmint.com/collect/dec... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Half_cr...) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bank_of... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bank_of...