Daily Prompt: "Cottage"
When I was a little boy I had one grandfather ("Grandad"), one grandmother ("Nan") and two great grandmothers ("Great-Gran" and "Great-Nan"). They were, respectively, "Dad's Dad," "Mum's Mum," "Mum's Mum's Mum" and "Mum's Dad's Mum."
Today's blog post has been prompted by memories of visiting my Great-Gran, that is, my Mum's Mum's Mum, who lived in a farm labourers cottage deep in rural Sussex down a narrow country lane in a place that was so remote it was called "World's End," or was near a place called World's End - I forget exactly which.
I had also forgotten that the cottage was called "Downsview," presumably because it had a view of the Sussex Downs.
However, there's a lot that I do remember about visiting Great Gran.
None of Your Mod-Cons
For one thing, her cottage was a poky place, quite different from the modern semi-detached house that Mum and Dad had bought, or even the army married-quarters in Gibraltar, Wakefield, Leeds, Maidstone, and Cyprus where we'd lived prior to that. Our house was no palace, but to a little boy it almost seemed so after returning from Great Gran's.
Great Gran's cottage had no electricity and no mains running water and certainly no modern flushing toilet. The toilet was in a hut at the bottom of the garden, the abode of garden spiders, a wooden seat over a hole in the ground.
As you can see in the photos, there was a climbing rose that made an arch over the doorway of the little old front door.
A Nocturnal Visitor From The Dark Side
Great Gran had married into the strict old Calvinist wing of my mother's family. My great-grandfather died in 1957 and for the next fifteen years Great Gran lived alone at Downsview Cottage.
Alone... but not entirely alone...
One night while she was upstairs in bed she heard the back door bang open and, realizing who it was who was coming in in the pitch black of the night, she cried out, "I know that's you, Satan!" which, apparently, was enough to see him off.
Great Gran As I Remember Her
Great Gran always wore her hair up in a great grey bun, and invariably wore an apron over a flowery dress and old woollen cardigan.
Here is a photo of Great Gran in the doorway of her cottage, with my Dad looking remotely off to one side.
I Shall Kep Comin'
When my Dad was in the army he was posted to Leeds (in 1966), way up in smoky Yorkshire. Great Gran agreed to pay us a visit and Mum drove down to Downsview cottage, with me (I was about three or four at the time), to pick her up.
It was the longest trip Great Gran had ever been on.
On the way up to Yorkshire Mum got lost and said to Great Gran that she didn't know where she was going. Great Gran's reply was something along the lines of,
"Wherever you're going Duckie, I shall kep comin'."
Great Gran had eight children. Two died in infancy. I remember all five of my great uncles and aunts (as well as my Nan, of course,) very well. Every single one of them had a biblical name: Ruth, Joseph, Lois, Jabez, David, and Thomas.
Thomas, or "Tom," was the youngest while my mum was the eldest of the eldest, and only four years younger than Tom, so they were more like brother and sister when Mum used to visit her Gran and Grandad at Downsview Cottage in her childhood. For my mother, Downsview Cottage was a place she loved to escape to, but that is another story.
In the title photo at the top, my mother is standing with my little sister, aged about three at the time, and with Uncle Tom's mother-in-law.
The photos are all of the same day's visit. Great Gran's youngest son was there, my Great Uncle Tom, to cut the grass. Here we are with him:
And here is Aunty Anne, Uncle Tom's wife, who always made a fuss of us and is still going strong today without having seemed to change much at all over the years.
Blessed Are They That Are Called To The Marriage Supper
My last memory is this, that as Christmas 1972 approached, Mum decided that the best present for Great Gran would be a food parcel, and it turned out that other chapel relatives had also bought food for her, rather than more permenent gifts. It was considered by them a remarkable circumstance of the Lord's working, that they had done so as Great Gran was called from her earthly cottage early in the New Year of 1973.
I don't know if that remarkable circumstance was what prompted someone to select these words from Revelations for her gravestone,
"Blessed are they that are called to the marriage..."
which alludes to, "the marriage supper of the Lamb."
Not too long after the materfamilias had been buried, the old cottage was demolished and some ghastly modern eyesore erected in its place. My mother vowed never to go there again as it just wasn't the same any more.
And with that, another little piece of Old England passed away. When I look at those photos they seem to be from a different world.
The past is indeed another country.
David Hurley