The continuing story of the house Joe and Mary Ann Scott lived in for over 50 years and the families that have lived here since.*
Now I often wonder what Joe and Mary Ann would have made of my first Chorlton house which aimed at minimalism, or that I exchanged their home for another only to return just four years later.
Like many of my generation I was influenced by Habitat, that guide to modern living which came in the shape of a chain of designer shops and of course the catalogue.
I embraced its ideas with a vengeance, and in the temporary home on Reeves Road, I took out doors, gas fires and covered the walls with woodchip.
There were few pictures and little that could be said to be fussy.
In this I had been helped by the previous owners who knocked the two downstairs rooms into one, and ripped out the old fireplaces.
I just continued the job, from which I learned that houses should be respected, and that you depart from the original design at your peril.
The result was that when I moved back to Joe and Mary’s Ann’s house, I chose to keep the ground plan, leaving rooms as they were, and replacing the vanished fireplaces with period ones, bought in east Manchester.
I made a few mistakes with renovations, and we now have a bathroom with a claw legged bath and original wooden water cistern which while they are old are not contemporary with the house.
Still by retaining the original plan we have two downstairs room which we can float between, although we have not as yet called them the Winter room and the Summer room, and they have proved invaluable for when the kids have briefly come home, allowing them to set up in one while we have the other.
Nor have we knocked the kitchen through, which may create the “living kitchen” but means the cooking smells linger well into the night as you watch TV.
Location; Chorlton
Picture; from the collection of Andrew Simpson, 1978
*The story of a house, https://chorltonhistory.blogspot.co.uk/search/label/The%20story
Like many of my generation I was influenced by Habitat, that guide to modern living which came in the shape of a chain of designer shops and of course the catalogue.
I embraced its ideas with a vengeance, and in the temporary home on Reeves Road, I took out doors, gas fires and covered the walls with woodchip.
There were few pictures and little that could be said to be fussy.
In this I had been helped by the previous owners who knocked the two downstairs rooms into one, and ripped out the old fireplaces.
I just continued the job, from which I learned that houses should be respected, and that you depart from the original design at your peril.
The result was that when I moved back to Joe and Mary’s Ann’s house, I chose to keep the ground plan, leaving rooms as they were, and replacing the vanished fireplaces with period ones, bought in east Manchester.
I made a few mistakes with renovations, and we now have a bathroom with a claw legged bath and original wooden water cistern which while they are old are not contemporary with the house.
Still by retaining the original plan we have two downstairs room which we can float between, although we have not as yet called them the Winter room and the Summer room, and they have proved invaluable for when the kids have briefly come home, allowing them to set up in one while we have the other.
Nor have we knocked the kitchen through, which may create the “living kitchen” but means the cooking smells linger well into the night as you watch TV.
Location; Chorlton
Picture; from the collection of Andrew Simpson, 1978
*The story of a house, https://chorltonhistory.blogspot.co.uk/search/label/The%20story
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