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Visiting Uncle Gordon in Kinnerton
Posted by
Vanda
,
25 January 2012
·
91 views
As many of you know I lived with my Gran, Mother and Sister in Chalford from the very early age of about 6 months until I got married and then lived in Ebley.
Most of my family on my Grans side were from Wales and sometimes we went to stay with relatives there.
My favourite person was Uncle Gordon who was my Grans first cousin. He lived in Kinnerton, Powys. He lived on a small farm with a couple of cows and some chickens. He had a very small one up and one down house with no running water, the toilet was down the garden and was the typical hole in the plank of wood affair.
The one thing I will always remember was his bristly chin. He would stoop down and give me a quick peck on the cheek and I can still remember his bristles ticking my face.
As his house was very small we could not all go at once and so sometimes just my Mum and myself went to stay with him.
We would set off early in the morning with our cases and catch the bus to Stroud and then on to Cheltenham. I am not too sure where we went to after that as I was only about 10 years old but we seemed to travel for hours and quite often arrive when it was pitch black. It was quite an adventure for someone so young.
Anyway, his house was very small and consisted of a multifunctional room downstairs which had a table and chairs, a few pieces of old furniture and a big black range to cook on complete with pots and pans hanging from hooks over the range. He also had a small pantry which led off from this room.
Upstairs was a bed on the landing (which is where we slept) a small table with the old china bowl and jug for washing in, complete with a china pot under the bed and another bedroom in which he slept.
Uncle Gordon got up quite a lot earlier than we did and he used to bring us up hot water and empty it in the large jug so we could have a quick wash. We tended to use the pot during the night as we did not want to walk up the path to the outside loo in the dark. The only problem we had was emptying it. Mum did not like to carry the full pot down in the morning in case we came across Uncle Gordon.
One morning after washing ourselves we decided to lob the wee out of the window as there was an overgrown path running alongside the house which no one used or so we thought. Mum opened the window and was just about to empty the pot and who did we see but Uncle Gordon strolling down the path. We quickly yanked the pot back in and shut the window, we put it back under the bed and when the coast was clear later on went back retrieved the pot and emptied it on the garden.
I always liked to “help” out on the farm whether it was collecting eggs, or attempting to cut the tall grass with a scythe, which proved more difficult than it looked, or help to collect the water from the spring.
On one such occasion, he suggested that I go and collect the recently laid eggs from the hen house on my own as I had seen him do it several times.
Great says me and off I trundle up the garden to the chicken coup with little basket in hand. I scrabbled around in the coup for a while and found quite a few eggs and placed them carefully in the basket and skipped back up the path into the house and proudly presented the eggs to Uncle Gordon. He looked at the eggs and then back at me and gently explained that we could not eat all the eggs as some of them were china ones! I was totally confused until he explained why these china eggs were there.
As he lived on his own we always took some food with us. Sometimes it was a large cooked joint of ham/beef as he had nowhere much to cook apart from the range.
He kept all of his food in the larder. He had the old fashioned cheese safe but no fridge as he had only just had electricity installed. Meals consisted of lots of bread, eggs and the occasional piece of meat.
One evening we settled down to some of the cooked ham we had taken with us a few days previously and after cutting several chunks of bread he started to slice the ham.
Both Mum and myself noticed that the ham seemed “alive”, On closer examination we discovered maggots were having a hay day with this ham, there were loads crawling over it. What did Uncle Gordon do – he just scrapped them off and carried on slicing and put it on our plates. We had no alternative but to eat it as we did not want to offend him.
It was similar when we opened a jar of home made jam which had a couple of inches of faust on it. It just got scrapped off and put back on the table. Oh happy days! You wouldn’t do that today but it didn’t do us any harm.
Water was always in short supply as the only water available was what you collected from the spring. It was quite a walk and we would set off with a couple of buckets each, fill them up and stagger back. We always used it wisely as we didn’t want to go back again for more.
I always liked seeing Uncle Gordon and spent many a happy week in Kinnerton before his death.
Later on in the spring we are going to go back to Kinnerton and do the “family thing” and visit his old house, local family grave yards and churches and I am sure it will bring back many a happy memory.
Most of my family on my Grans side were from Wales and sometimes we went to stay with relatives there.
My favourite person was Uncle Gordon who was my Grans first cousin. He lived in Kinnerton, Powys. He lived on a small farm with a couple of cows and some chickens. He had a very small one up and one down house with no running water, the toilet was down the garden and was the typical hole in the plank of wood affair.
The one thing I will always remember was his bristly chin. He would stoop down and give me a quick peck on the cheek and I can still remember his bristles ticking my face.
As his house was very small we could not all go at once and so sometimes just my Mum and myself went to stay with him.
We would set off early in the morning with our cases and catch the bus to Stroud and then on to Cheltenham. I am not too sure where we went to after that as I was only about 10 years old but we seemed to travel for hours and quite often arrive when it was pitch black. It was quite an adventure for someone so young.
Anyway, his house was very small and consisted of a multifunctional room downstairs which had a table and chairs, a few pieces of old furniture and a big black range to cook on complete with pots and pans hanging from hooks over the range. He also had a small pantry which led off from this room.
Upstairs was a bed on the landing (which is where we slept) a small table with the old china bowl and jug for washing in, complete with a china pot under the bed and another bedroom in which he slept.
Uncle Gordon got up quite a lot earlier than we did and he used to bring us up hot water and empty it in the large jug so we could have a quick wash. We tended to use the pot during the night as we did not want to walk up the path to the outside loo in the dark. The only problem we had was emptying it. Mum did not like to carry the full pot down in the morning in case we came across Uncle Gordon.
One morning after washing ourselves we decided to lob the wee out of the window as there was an overgrown path running alongside the house which no one used or so we thought. Mum opened the window and was just about to empty the pot and who did we see but Uncle Gordon strolling down the path. We quickly yanked the pot back in and shut the window, we put it back under the bed and when the coast was clear later on went back retrieved the pot and emptied it on the garden.
I always liked to “help” out on the farm whether it was collecting eggs, or attempting to cut the tall grass with a scythe, which proved more difficult than it looked, or help to collect the water from the spring.
On one such occasion, he suggested that I go and collect the recently laid eggs from the hen house on my own as I had seen him do it several times.
Great says me and off I trundle up the garden to the chicken coup with little basket in hand. I scrabbled around in the coup for a while and found quite a few eggs and placed them carefully in the basket and skipped back up the path into the house and proudly presented the eggs to Uncle Gordon. He looked at the eggs and then back at me and gently explained that we could not eat all the eggs as some of them were china ones! I was totally confused until he explained why these china eggs were there.
As he lived on his own we always took some food with us. Sometimes it was a large cooked joint of ham/beef as he had nowhere much to cook apart from the range.
He kept all of his food in the larder. He had the old fashioned cheese safe but no fridge as he had only just had electricity installed. Meals consisted of lots of bread, eggs and the occasional piece of meat.
One evening we settled down to some of the cooked ham we had taken with us a few days previously and after cutting several chunks of bread he started to slice the ham.
Both Mum and myself noticed that the ham seemed “alive”, On closer examination we discovered maggots were having a hay day with this ham, there were loads crawling over it. What did Uncle Gordon do – he just scrapped them off and carried on slicing and put it on our plates. We had no alternative but to eat it as we did not want to offend him.
It was similar when we opened a jar of home made jam which had a couple of inches of faust on it. It just got scrapped off and put back on the table. Oh happy days! You wouldn’t do that today but it didn’t do us any harm.
Water was always in short supply as the only water available was what you collected from the spring. It was quite a walk and we would set off with a couple of buckets each, fill them up and stagger back. We always used it wisely as we didn’t want to go back again for more.
I always liked seeing Uncle Gordon and spent many a happy week in Kinnerton before his death.
Later on in the spring we are going to go back to Kinnerton and do the “family thing” and visit his old house, local family grave yards and churches and I am sure it will bring back many a happy memory.
