People ate plainer food then and a pot of broth usually sat simmering away.

Houses with a room and kitchen were called “buts and bens”. Lots of them

had boxed-in beds on one side of a wall and you had a wee scullery (kitchen

now).

§

Jug for water

A marble slab

Basin for washing in and

for baking on

Pails to keep water in.

‘The toilet was usually put up a mile away from the house; the first one

consisted of a long scrubbed wooden board with a round hole in the middle

and a pail under it; but in later years they had a chemical closet which was a

bit better. It was an eerie place on a winter night and a windy place too as

there was a space above the door. A candle was used and you had to look to

see if there were any creepy-crawlies about. The man of the house usually

emptied it into a hole in the garden. Vegetables grew big in those days!

Chamber pots were used a lot then.

‘in one house near the foot of the village the lady was a dressmaker. I had

the girls’ frocks made there and she often told me that John, her husband, had

been up through the night shooting rats; he kept a gun at the side of his bed.

‘An old lady who was very tiny stayed at the top of the town — she lived

to be over 100. She had a set of drums and used to sit at her front door

playing them. Many years later I said to her one day “Do you still play your

drums?” “No”, she said, “the rats ate the skins of them”. There was another

family who lived in a wooden caravan along at the corner of “The Cherries”

(on the High Road). There was an old granny, aunts and children. They must

have had a long way to carry water, probably from the well you see in front

of Mrs. Hughes’ (further along the High Road). The caravan went on fire one

night. The piece of land there (in front of Mrs. Hughes’) belongs to the

village and is called the “well green”. People bleached their clothes there

long ago. There also stood an old house between the old Irish Huts and Mrs.

Hughes’ house where lived a real old worthy who smoked a clay pipe; she

told many tales. She didn’t have much comfort — a box bed, a chair and

table and always a dog (well fed). She lived to be a good age. She and her

man, when they were younger, were sort of “rag and bone” sellers.

‘Two doors up from Verners’ shop of today stood the village store which

was just one room of the house. They sold all kinds of things but the thing I

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