Monday 3 June 2013

The 1939 house, more photo's

Oh Lordy, more photo's of the 1939 house, keep plodding on, here's another batch. I had to flit from room to room as there was a bit of congestion with so many people visiting. It was getting a bit of a squash to get the photo's so some of them are not in any particular order. This looks like the sideboard in the front parlour.


The dressing table in the master bedroom.
The fireplace in the master bedroom. Fancy having a bucket of coal next to your bed.
Two more of the dresser. Click on the photo's to enlarge.

Next is the spare room. Excuse the quality of the photo's it was difficult with the sun streaming in through the windows.

The guest bed. Joanna offers an overnight stay if you wish to have a full 1939 experience.  
The dressing gown felt like it was made out of horsehair, very heavy and rough to the touch. I remember those.


Pee pot if you need it in the night, ha ha.
A bedside table. Don't forget to blow the candle out before you fall asleep.
Hang your outdoor coats here, at the bottom of the stairs in between the two rooms.
Another taste of 1939. Thank you for reading so far, more to come. It's sunny and I must go outside and do things. Toodle pip, catch you tomorrow with more pics.

17 comments:

  1. Hello. This is off-topic for this post but I wanted to thank you publicly for the wonderful shopping bag. A friend was with me when I opened the package, and I thought I was going to have to fight her for it. It is so beautiful and so well made. I will carry it proudly. I'm going to use it as a library bag, to tote books to and from (I generally get 6-10 books at a time; must have reading material at hand). You're an excellent artist and fine crafter. Thank you for the very generous gift.

    jesinalbuquerque

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    1. Hi Jes. I am so pleased you like the bag, a good idea to use it for your library books, it would be a shame to get it dirty carrying lots of food shopping about. I hope you get many years of use out of it. Best wishes.

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  2. I had a stone hotwater bottle as a child. Also I remember a treatment for earache: my Nanan would fill one of her black woollen stockings with salt, heat it in the oven and use it as a hot pack. Very comforting until I had my tonsils out at age 5.

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  3. Your last couple of posts have been really interesting, what a fascinating house.

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  4. Love old properties , would love to visit

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  5. I'm astonished at how much I recognized from personal experience! My "granma" lived in an older section of Grantham near the railroad station, and she had one of those walled-in back yards with the old kitchen/scullery along the left side, then the toilet next in a sort of shed. It looked the twin of the one in the photos I found in your link. No bathroom, of course. At home about four miles away, I remember watching the Coronation on our new Ekco telly -- along with about two dozen neighbors! I was six in 1953. I could go on for hours and hours...Elaine near Philly

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  6. Fabulous! I'm not clear about whether the owner lives in the house full time. Does she live there and do all her washing, cooking etc as they did in 1939? Hard going if she does. Having spent one winter with no washing machine, not even a spin dryer, there is no way I would willingly live with just a dolly tub and mangle. Although my mother, now 85, did the washing for a household of 6 at the sink and with just a mangle and later a spin dryer until about the early 1980's! She is made of sterner stuff than me!!

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    1. Hi Attila. I have just spoken to Joanna on the phone, (she has a mobile) and asked her your questions. Monday is wash day, and she does her washing in the dolly tub, just the same as they used to do. Then puts it through the mangle, and hangs it out on the line. The water is heated on the range, and she does her cooking on that as well. So, yes, she lives in 1939, in the house full time.

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  7. Thank you for all the lovely pics, Ilona. I've been fascinated with the WW2 homefront for years and collect women's magazines, knitting patterns and cookery books from the period. We went to a 1940s event at Dover Castle on bank holiday weekend, and there was a display of 1940s laundry, a newsagents shop, make do and mend, a Ministry of Food demonstration and a Naafi wagon (cup of tea in a tin mug and a hunk of bread pudding all for £1.50, not WW2 prices but still good value and so yummy). There was an excellent programme on Channel 4 called Time Warp Wives a few years back with women who lived as if in the 30s and 40s. I wish it was available on dvd, also the excellent Wartime Kitchen and Garden which I have a very bad recording of. Of course, there was Wartime Farm last year which was also really good. I'd love to live in a house like that, but I don't think DH would be too keen. I think you already practice a lot of the values of the day, making do and mending what you can.

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    1. Time warp wives might be on youtube

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    2. Some of it was, but unfortunately only the first half of the 30 minute programme and then it was taken off due to copyright issues.

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  8. Great post Ilona and there are so many things in your photo's that I remember. I've stubbed my toes many times on a stone hot water bottle. The chamber pot, we called a guzunder, because it guzunder the bed.
    My grannie lived in a little cottage with gas lights and when she moved into sheltered accommodation, sat up all night because she didn't know how to turn off the bathroom light. She loved all the modern conveniences especially her second hand tv.

    Pickering have a marvellous wartime weekend every year, its well worth a visit.

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  9. Such a fascinating house! You dream of living like this, but would we truely have the guts to do it? Your friend must be admired to stick it out in our modern world. If she really does her washing in that now primative way she truely is a strong woman. Nice photos!

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  10. The museum of science and industry in Manchester has some period household displays.

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  11. I`m sure that`s my Granny`s bed!

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