Reminiscences of Stan Whaley – (Mona Villa (no:58) from 1915 – 1932)
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As recorded by H S Whaley in 1981
Mona Villa was a well built but modest home considered quite adequate when built in
the 1800s. We had a wooden gate, substantial and with the name “Mona Villa” clearly painted on in gold letters The narrow front door opened to a dark narrow passage and the stairs were similarly narrow and steep and had an awkward twist at the top. My bedroom at the back had two high wooden steps down from the door. The other two bedrooms were larger and had fireplaces but these were never used – Mum had enough to do without lugging bucketfuls of coal up those stairs. So those bedrooms were extremely cold during those winters like 1929 when we had 25deg of frost for days on end. So we nightly heated bricks in the oven and having wrapped them in flannel took them to bed with us. We went to bed by candlelight although there was a convenient gas lamp in the road outside which illuminated our front room.
Downstairs there were three rooms but the ‘sitting room’ was hardly ever used and we rarely ‘entertained’. Most of our life was spent in the ‘living room’, around the useful table. The only room lit by gas was this main room – where two smokey mantles, one each side of the tall chimney piece, gave a dim light. Much of our reading and homework was done by the light of the paraffin lamp which had to be carried precariously into the kitchen for use there. For meals, Dad sat at the end nearest the fire and we three children sat on a straight homemade wooden bench along the side. Mum sat nearest the door , so that she could readily skip out to the kitchen which housed the gas-cooker and sink. We bathed in turn in the kitchen in a small portable tin bath and Mum had the tiring job of boiling sufficient hot water on the stove to satisfy the five of us in all.
The house was really badly designed. There were two awkward steps between the main room and the kitchen and the only larder and storage space was a dark damp gloomy space beneath the stairs. It had few shelves and must have been too damp to store goods for long. The only access was by three narrow wooden steps and down these Nora fell more than once to the cold stone floor at the bottom.
Mona Villa had no indoor loo. Our one lavatory was situated at the far end of our yard and several times every day, we had to negotiate four sandstone steps and pass a draughty wash house and coal shed. Our fire was always coal but we easily obtained wood as well. This yard had once contained the well, but prior to our arrival in 1914, mains water had arrived and the well bricked over. Mum spent a lot of her time in the washhouse . Every Monday she was up especially early to light the temperamental fire in the boiler and then spent hours boiling the clothes and mangling them before hanging on the line.
By 1929 Mum’s shrewd saving enabled us to have a drastic renovation of Mona Villa. Harry Willis put in electricity so that we had light even in the bedrooms and kitchen. Mum’s uncle – Tom Warrington – was commissioned to install a Triplex cooker and a new grate in place of the antiquated open range. A bath with hot water supply was installed in the kitchen.
One of the best features of Mona Villa was its garden. A gravel path led from the gate, past our stone sculpture and between the flower borders to the yard door. At one time Dad built a parallel trellis for roses along the lawn and this ended at our holly tree and the rockery which contained some carved stones. We once invited the city archaeologist to examine these but he dismissed them as of no value.
The fruit trees were our special delight . The huge pear tree at the top of the lawn produced an enormous crop every other November and it was such a mammoth task to gather these that we used to call in the Chester Market fruiterer James Dandy. He was a rough looking man and his two assistants looked almost villainous as they recklessly flung long ladders against our tree and ransacked it for fruit. Dandy used to offer Mum only £1/-/- per ton of pears. This fine old tree was a splendid sight when the blossom came out every May and we children used its trunk as a wicket for our amateur games of cricket.
Mum also benefited from our three Victorian fruit trees. They produced good crops of large juicy plums which made good jam and in bumper years we sold excess plums to people like cousin Gladys who paid nearly twopence a pound for selected plums. Our one damson tree was small but annually produced sound fruit which made excellent jam. It was my job to climb its slender branches to collect the damsons.
Our best fruit was the apple crop. ‘Nora’s ‘ tree near the house usually produced a nice juicy fruit but the bright red eating apple was an irregular cropper. The finest tree was our ‘Anne Elizabeth’ which produced an enormous apple late in the autumn.
The garden was one of my father’s special delights. Our lawn was useful and kept in trim and along its edge was always a herbaceous border with daisies, golden rod, dahlias, wallflowers and chrysanthemums – which tended to get in the way whenever we played cricket. Dad often grew sweet peas as well. Then there was a large vegetable section which Dad dug over routinely every Good Friday. It was regarded as axiomatic that we should be self-sufficient as far as vegetables were concerned. Potatoes, onions, cabbage, lettuce and radish were successful but celery and carrots were poor. Dad pickled the pea and broad bean seeds in red lead to thwart the sparrows.
Of great interest to us children was the poultry run. A good sized poultry shed housed a dozen hens and a cockerel and through the years we had leghorns and white Wyandotts , Light Sussex or Rhode Island Reds. Eggs were produced in reasonable quantity one of my self-imposed tasks for several years was to keep a daily record of eggs laid. Some of the eggs were sold to Arthur the milkman. When a bird was needed for the table, Mum would first isolate it in a pen to clear its gizzard and then cut its throat before plucking it – keeping some feathers for pillows. Albert Fletcher next door had a fox-terrier which was useful to catch rats after we found eggs were going missing. With Dicksons nursery next door there were plenty of mice and rats so we had a succession of cats all called Judy. Dad kept rabbits – specialising in the glamorous Chinchilla breed. At one time Mum was able to kill as many as 17; skin them; nail the pelts on boards; treat them with saltpetre and when properly cured cleverly used them for a muff and a lovely pair of gloves for Norah. They were smart comfortable and lasted many years.