The story of one house in Lausanne Road over a century and a half, and of one family who lived there in the 1950s.*
Now our pond would not have won any prizes in Home and Garden Magazine, but it was built by my mum and has stood the test of time.
Just why she decided in the summer of 1963 to build it is a mystery but then she was always one for impulsive acts.
The year before she had bought two rabbits from the pet shop in Hither Green fully expecting that within a year we would be making money from selling rabbit meat and fur.
It didn’t happen and the following year they were returned to the said pet shop.
But the pond was different. She dug it out in the spring, laid the brick walls in the early summer and got the chap from next door who was a plasterer to put a skim of cement over it and in the following March we left for Eltham.
But remarkably it is still there today although like so much of the house and the garden it looks a lot smaller.
What I remember as a long garden full of apple and pear trees has shrunk and is now a mass of interesting bushes flowers and hidden places.
I had always wondered why there were so many fruit trees but given that the area was given over to market gardens before the houses were built it all made sense.
And as the average age of such trees is about 60 to 70 years some of ours must have been coming to the end of their productive life back in the 1950s.
That said some at least would crop so heavily that branches would break under the weight.
Others I now think were showing their age and the fruit was less every year despite their size.
All of which I took for granted as I did the wasps which every year filled the garden drawn by the pears.
We were never scared of them then and still have a healthy respect for them today.
Looking back what surprises me is the lack of a back alley.
Here in the north houses of a certain period were built with an alley and it didn’t matter if they were the basic two up two down with a yard or the homes of more prosperous people who could look out on a garden, there behind was that alley.
They make perfect sense. Heavy and rather dirty things can be brought into the back of the house without having to be taken through the front door, along the passage and out to the back.
And that of course includes the dustbin.
Today most of us will leave the wheelie bins at the front or the side of house. But back in the 1950s no one on Lausanne Road would be seen leaving the metal dustbin out the front.
Instead once a week the smelly bit would be humped through the house, and after the dustcart had gone would be taken back after a decent amount of that powered disinfectant had been throw in.
Which brings me back to that pond and the obvious observation that the bricks, the cement and the fish all came though the front door.
Now that is something that the first proud owners might not have been so happy with.
Pictures; the pond and garden in the summer of1963, and in 2012 from the collection of Andrew Simpson.
*The story of one house in Lausanne Road, http://chorltonhistory.blogspot.co.uk/search/label/The%20story%20of%20one%20house%20in%20Lausanne%20Road
Just why she decided in the summer of 1963 to build it is a mystery but then she was always one for impulsive acts.
The year before she had bought two rabbits from the pet shop in Hither Green fully expecting that within a year we would be making money from selling rabbit meat and fur.
It didn’t happen and the following year they were returned to the said pet shop.
But the pond was different. She dug it out in the spring, laid the brick walls in the early summer and got the chap from next door who was a plasterer to put a skim of cement over it and in the following March we left for Eltham.
But remarkably it is still there today although like so much of the house and the garden it looks a lot smaller.
What I remember as a long garden full of apple and pear trees has shrunk and is now a mass of interesting bushes flowers and hidden places.
And as the average age of such trees is about 60 to 70 years some of ours must have been coming to the end of their productive life back in the 1950s.
That said some at least would crop so heavily that branches would break under the weight.
Others I now think were showing their age and the fruit was less every year despite their size.
All of which I took for granted as I did the wasps which every year filled the garden drawn by the pears.
We were never scared of them then and still have a healthy respect for them today.
Looking back what surprises me is the lack of a back alley.
They make perfect sense. Heavy and rather dirty things can be brought into the back of the house without having to be taken through the front door, along the passage and out to the back.
And that of course includes the dustbin.
Today most of us will leave the wheelie bins at the front or the side of house. But back in the 1950s no one on Lausanne Road would be seen leaving the metal dustbin out the front.
Instead once a week the smelly bit would be humped through the house, and after the dustcart had gone would be taken back after a decent amount of that powered disinfectant had been throw in.
Which brings me back to that pond and the obvious observation that the bricks, the cement and the fish all came though the front door.
Now that is something that the first proud owners might not have been so happy with.
Pictures; the pond and garden in the summer of1963, and in 2012 from the collection of Andrew Simpson.
*The story of one house in Lausanne Road, http://chorltonhistory.blogspot.co.uk/search/label/The%20story%20of%20one%20house%20in%20Lausanne%20Road
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