The house in Surrey where I was brought up. The last time I posted this picture it brought my estranged brother out of the woodwork (well, half out anyway) but there is no fear of that anymore because he is dead.
The two gables to the left were an extension added by the original builder to house his wife. They fell out for some reason, but I believe it may have been triggered by her having an affair with the Italian gardener. Strangely, many gardeners in the area even when we were there were Italian and, talking of triggering, the owner solved the problem of his wife's infidelity by shooting the gardener dead, having 'mistaken him for a rabbit'. The courts were much more understanding in those days.
What is it about the Home Counties and mock Tudor? I have a feeling it has something to do with the aspirations of the rapidly expanding middle classes of the era. This house was built in 1907 - coincidently the same year that my father was built. The original owner made a small fortune by winning the Irish Sweepstake.
The Southern English family's ambition to better themselves was to get as close as possible to the Royal Family, and the sad fact which they refused to accept was that they would not even get an invitation to a garden party of 500 people no matter - or rather because of - how hard they tried. Simply desiring to befriend the aristocracy was automatic failure.
The Northerner's idea of success was much more sensible - send your son to university, make enough money to pay the bills, get out of the mine, etc. etc. The American definition of success was very basic in general - make a lot of money.
There was one way out of this silly situation which transcended all social rules and mores, allowing a person to mingle at all levels of society, and that was to become an artist. I don't know how this poor excuse became so universally accepted in the South, but it even works today.
The affair with the gardener could well have had something to do with it 🤣🤣🤣
ReplyDeleteWe have many greenhouses and garden centres here and it is known that many Italians settled here after the war and many were gardeners who grew fruit and veg and flowers.
Your childhood home was amazing .... is it still there ? XXXX
Oops, your reply is below.
DeleteThe house is still there, but the vast lawn is now a little housing estate. This was my brother's idea to maximise the money he would eventually steal from my parents. He had the lot. Every penny.
ReplyDeleteSo sad on both counts..Families, who'd 'ave 'em? as they say. On the other hand money isn't everything
DeleteMoney was everything to my brother, and - as a consequence - the lack of it has had quite an effect on my life in later years. He destroyed my parents, who were wracked with guilt about how they were conned by him and how they could not give the rest of us anything in the end. I did not want them to end their lives in remorse, but I know that remorse did not figure at all in my brother's last hours. He was a shocking cunt.
DeleteI remember an Italian gardener being shot a few years ago. Coincidentally the house looks great for playing murder in the dark. Lots of rooms and nooks and crannies to hide in. I like a house with lots of rooms.
ReplyDeleteThere being a 10 year age difference between me and my oldest sister, I played a lot of hide and seek with myself. The house was haunted by others when I was a kid, now it is haunted by me.
DeleteAll this just deepens the mystery behind your life Tom. But maybe that is what it is intended to do.
ReplyDeleteIf I can squeeze a bit of extra mystery into my life Weave, then I will.
DeleteLooks like a grand home to have grown up in.
ReplyDeleteIt was, but my school friends who envied me did not understand the loneliness of being such a 'privileged' child. They did not have to sleep in huge bedrooms without brothers and sisters on hand to calm then in the night. I embraced the darkness, and the darkness embraced me.
DeleteArtists don't go by anyone else's rules. If they do, they're not artists.
ReplyDeleteNo, they are tossers. Artists are just as bound by other's rules as anyone else, and if an artist tells you that they are not, tell them from me that they are, indeed, a tosser.
DeleteMy father was born in 1907. August 28. Far too long ago to be interesting today.
ReplyDeleteMy father was born in 1928 and after Mum died set about writing his memoirs. It was utterly fascinating, for an ordinary man who lived an ordinary life. His parents and uncles were greatly affected by the first world war and, now nearly 92, he has lived through enormous change in the way we live.
DeleteI bet your own father's story is just as fascinating.
It is. He was a rear gunner in WW2 RAF and was shot down. He was the only one left in the plane when it came down in Kent and survived. When out of hospital he was put into an office in Whitehall where he unearthed a German spy. The spy poisoned his tea, but he survived that too.
DeleteI wonder if the Italian rabbit haunts the house as well? Going to sleep at night in such a rambling house would have given me the willies, too. Isn't this the kind of house that musicians who make some $$ buy to show that they've arrived?
ReplyDeleteThe main house had a blocked-off corridor leading to the wife's annex. Blocked-off corridors tend to confuse ghosts. I often heard people walking down it at night. Yes, in those days the nouveau riche thought that this sort of architecture was tasteful.
DeleteI suppose that is what you put down to experience, those chance moments that threw your mother and father together produced you and your wicked brother. But large houses were always so cold in the olden days;)
ReplyDeleteThe only time my father turned on the heating in my bedroom (which was the centre mock Tudor bit) was when I caught pneumonia. We were quite poor compared to our neighbours.
DeleteVery Lady Chatterley!
ReplyDeleteI love those mock Tudor houses, so English and solidly middle class, everything I used to aspire to living in the tiny council semi I was brought up in. Only the vicar and village doctor lived in something like that and I married the vicar's son!
It's sad that your childhood and beyond were blighted by a nasty brother and makes me realise that I was lucky to have been poor but happy.
That's what H.I. says. She was brought up my the best parents you could wish for, in a tiny terrace house in Sheffield.
DeleteRhododendrons and tennis parties. It's rather like being catapulted into Mrs. Dales Diary.Do you think you'd still like it?
ReplyDeleteI didn't like it the first time. It was all I knew. I moved there aged 5.
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