Wednesday 21 January 2015

One hundred years of one house in Chorlton part 53 ............ rediscovering curtains and respecting the original design

The continuing story of the house Joe and Mary Ann Scott lived in for over 50 years and the families that have lived here since.*

Now if there is one thing I can be confident about it is that Joe and Mary Ann would not have gone in for stripped floors, window blinds and open plan.

Good quality carpets, thick heavy duty curtains and individual rooms made sense back in 1915 and as I know to my cost still do today.

When John bought the house on the death of Mary Ann he got rid of the carpets, sanded the downstairs floors and replaced the curtains with blinds.

And I followed suit when I bought the house a couple of years later.

It all fitted with that Habitat life style my generation embraced but made for a house of a thousand draughts.

At which point someone will proffer advice on how to seal the gaps in the floorboards, suggest a call to their favourite double glazing company and remind me of the value of wearing  another jumper.

All of which may have some merit but ignores the simple fact that Joe and Mary Ann had the right idea as I can testify now that we have gone back to curtains.  

They are heavy wool lined and while they have cut the bay off from the rest of the dining room at night have made the place so much warmer.

And the point is less about saving on the fuel bill and more about respecting the original design of the house.

It is a theme I have reflected on in the past but one which it won’t harm revisiting.

This house has a simple lay out which works.  There are two largish ground floor rooms, a smallish kitchen and pantry all leading off from the hall which means that different things can be going on at the same time in different rooms with little danger that one activity will intrude on someone else in another room.

Now had we knocked through from front to back that flexibility would have been lost, like wise running the kitchen into the dining room would have left us at the mercy of anyone coming in late from work and wanting to cook while we were watching television.

And it has to be said that the whole history of house design over 5 centuries has been to move away from one large communal living area to smaller more intimate spaces.

It is all very nice to open up the house so everyone can feel part of the family, but if 30 years of bringing up children has taught me anything it is that kids pretty much like to be on their own for large chunks of the time and there is nothing wrong with that.

I grew up having to endure the television choices of my parents, wishing that there was somewhere I could take friends and above all have those private telephone conversations well out of ear shot.

In our small house that meant hours in cold bedrooms and trips out to the telephone box at the end of the road.

So despite the atrocious things I have done to the house over the last 38 years, if Joe and Mary Ann walked in through the front door today the place would not offer up to many surprises.

Pictures; from the collections of Lois Sparshot and Andrew Simpson

*The story of a house,

No comments:

Post a Comment