I was actually born in Norfolk and Norwich Hospital in Norwich, but was brought home to Dickleburgh, where my parents kept the village shop. Looking back now, Dickleburgh is a good-sized village which runs along the ‘main road’, and encompasses a few roads on either side. When I lived there the main road was the A140 from Norwich to Ipswich, but a bypass means it is now a quieter siding off the A road.
You can see here where the new road joins the old Norwich/Ipswich road running through Dickleburgh – where the main road is now was just fields when I lived there.
Dad’s shop formed part of the house – we literally lived above (and behind and next to) the shop. The house is still there but is a private dwelling, just like all the other shops that were there when I was a child and before that. The drapers opposite us had already closed by the time I arrived, but there was still a butcher’s shop, Chenery’s Coaches and a fish and chip shop as well as two pubs, one of which is still open.
My parents married in 1955 and my dad bought the shop from Dick Chenery and moved in in January 1956 – they lived with mum’s parents in Mendham until then. I think dad’s money came from his inheritance from his own father Frederick who had died in 1942, and knowing my dad he supplemented it with savings – he was always very careful with money. Anyway, they never had a mortgage as far as I know.
The shop, as you would expect, was on what we called ‘The Street’, on the corner with Harvey Lane:
The shop front is towards the right of the building as you look at it in this photo. Roughly where the hanging basket is, was another window matching the one you see, and between them was the shop door. There was no hedge or tree outside the house front in my day – just some rough cobbles between the actual pavement and the house. Next door – the houses are actually detached but separated by about 6 inches’ gap – lived Rose and Dick Saunders. They were old even when I was tiny, and they sold petrol. That’s right – where the red brick house is today fronted by a small walled garden there stood two big petrol pumps. Thinking about it, pulling your car over on to the pavement on a main road should have been considered an obstruction and traffic hazard, but this was the 1960s.
The main front door on the left – you can see it partially covered by the rose bush here – led straight into our large front room, with its traditional 3 piece suite with loose covers, settee facing the fireplace, open fire and a matching armchair each side. I still have my mum’s sideboard which stood against one wall, and for many years after my tenth birthday the other wall housed my piano which was a gift at that age. During the 1970s we gained a ‘wall unit’ which were fashionable then, and my mum’s pride was her glass fronted display cabinet holding her glassware collection.
Behind the front room was the ‘little room’ – a sort of combined dining room and living room – we only went into the front room in the evening to watch TV. The old kitchen was a lean-to at the back, leading to the ‘back yard’ which dad had cemented over, with a narrow flower border along the side wall. At the back of the yard was a shed and the outside toilet – the only loo we had until the ‘renovation’. Opposite the toilet was a tiny square of soil which occasionally had some flowers in it but was usually bare as I remember.
The stairs were originally set between the front room and the shop, where there was a hallway, and upstairs was the master bedroom directly above the front room – my parents’ room at first, then mine later on; a smaller room which was originally mine (and then which I was forced to share with my sister!), over the shop. The smaller window on the right of the top floor wasn’t even there as far as I remember – this end of the house contained the bathroom, reached by walking through my bedroom, and through that a storeroom where I hid and played a lot of the time.
Just because we had a bathroom, don’t think we had a luxurious hot bath every day, with a shower over for when we didn’t have time to soak…oh no. There was a bath with running water – even that wasn’t usual in the late 50’s when my parents moved in. But no hot tap – there was a copper to heat up the water, but it had to be filled and emptied by hand with buckets, so bathtime was once a week. And there was not toilet – just the bath and washbasin.
Essentially the whole of the back of the house was knocked out and a new shell built extending it on both floors. The door you see in the picture leads into the new kitchen, and there was another door where the window in the back of the original house can be seen, which led into the shop. So you now had to go out into that little courtyard to get from the house into the shop. Incidentally, that little courtyard was home to a large oil tank, filed over the wall by a tanker when needed and with a tap on the front to enable dad to sell paraffin oil. While we’re outside, where the wooden gates are we had rather shabby red wooden double doors leading into a covered garage which ran down the side of the house and backed onto the back yard. The outbuilding you see was dad’s warehouse where boxes of groceries were stored prior to being put on the shelves in the shop – there was only so much space! It has – or at least had – a small attic from which dad produced plates, cups, saucers and dishes which I was given when I left home for college. They had been freebies years before, given in exchange for vouchers collected with some purchase or other, and dad had just left the residue in the attic ‘for when it was needed’. He never threw anything away!
In the early 1970s – can’t remember the exact year but I was at secondary school so probably around 1970-71 – we had “the renovation” done. You can see in this picture, taken from the rear of the house, the obvious ‘new’ bit added:
The renovation took what felt like years but was actually months, and the catchphrase of the time, used whenever anyone (usually mum) complained about the mess and disruption, was ‘It’ll be better when it’s done’. It’s still a family saying. As well as a brand new kitchen, with fitted units and a small window to the shop so mum could see from the kitchen if there were lots of customers (meaning she had to leave her housework and go in to help), the ‘little room’ became a larger room and the stairs were moved to the back of the house leading from the ‘little room’ (still called that). The old stairs and hallway were demolished and became part of the larger shop area, meaning dad could extend his range of products – notably now stocking wines and spirits. I approved, as it meant in order to ‘get to know the product’, we started having a different bottle of wine each week with Sunday lunch – and I was just at the right age to ask for a small glass…
Upstairs a landing was created leading past what now became my bedroom above the front room and the new bathroom opposite – yes, with a proper toilet and bath with hot and cold taps. No shower though – not in the early 70s! Next to the bathroom was mum and dad’s new room, part of the extension facing the back of the house. Further on a corridor took up part of my old room – now my sister’s – leading to the old bathroom/storeroom which became my brother’s room. You can see his bedroom window in the photo above.
The original part of the house is so old it has no deeds, so we are not sure exactly how old it is. During the work on the house a few coins were unearthed dating from the reign of George III, putting it in the late 1700s/early 1800s but it is likely to be much older than that. My room had black beams running through the walls and ceiling, and if you ran a marble across the floor it would describe ever-deceasing circles till is ended up in the lowest part of the floor. Nothing was straight or at the right angle – and I loved that.
When I first came home as a baby I slept in a cot, but once I was old enough for a bed I went straight into a double bed – I presume because mum and dad had bought the double for what was the spare room. I never felt it was too big – how could it be when every night I had teddy one side of me and my Sally doll the other? I think I crowded a few more cuddly toys in at various times, like my mum’s old panda which even then had seen better days, but the two constants were my treasured childhood companions. Teddy is still to this day resident in the reading room upstairs, but the elastic bands holding Sally together have disintegrated. Maybe one day we can do a Repair Shop job on her….
Sullivan Blyth Family 