Through a small door

We’ve almost finished the tour of the farmhouse for the moment but we will probably return to it some time.

Leave those elegant bedrooms and come back to the landing. There you’ll see a smaller door – open it and go through down to the back bedrooms.  The biggest of these was the “pink bedroom” which was quite a nice bedroom overlooking the courtyard.  One of my best memories of that bedroom is of various family members coming together to decorate it.  It was so damp that there was no need to soak the wallpaper: just pick off the bottom, walk backwards and it peeled off with no effort at all.  Great fun for small people!

Next to the pink bedroom was the bacon bedroom.  I don’t think it was decorated in all the years Grandma and Grandad lived in that house.  It was directly above the back kitchen and there was a trap door down to the kitchen.  The newly cured sides of bacon would be hauled up to be hung in the bedroom.  Also in that room there were long trestle tables on which apples were placed in the autumn to keep the household supplied with fruit until the rhubarb was ready the following year.  The room was divided in half and the further half was used for storing junk.  The junk included a home-made rocking horse which my cousin and I used to drag through into the pink bedroom, tether it to the rocking chair and play at chariot racing.  He rode the horse, I had the chariot.

I hope you’ve enjoyed this tour of the house.  It wasn’t until I started to write this series of posts that I realised just how many memories I have.  Recording them has been such joy - but maybe you guessed that!

Thank you.