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Elizabeth (Betty) Wyatt 2

CLAYBOTTOM COTTAGES 1947

In 1947 just married we went to live at the first cottage of two.

It was a six room cottage covered in ivy. No electricity, only oil lamps and a cold water pump over a brown earthenware sink. We had to use a pump at the side of the sink it was a large iron pump.

Washing day we had to light a fire under an old fashioned boiler to get hot water and bail it out into a bath to start washing clothes. Also put the clothes in the boiler to get the whites really white and boil them and babies nappies. Rinse well and put through the mangle.

To have a bath we heated water the same and bailed the water into a long zinc bath in the kitchen. We had an old fashioned oil heater to keep warm and tip the bath and water away after.

The old lady in the other joined cottage had six rooms the same. Only to get cold water she had a well outside and had to haul a bucket full each time.

We kept chickens in the field where the Aretians Club is now. We had new laid eggs, and over the kitchen was a loft and my husband built steps to it from large stones. We had little baby chicks up there and wire netting over the door and people used to bring their children to look up at them as they walked down the lane.

Just before my daughter was born my husband wanted me to have electricity. The Farm two fields away was the nearest with electricity. So it was arranged if my husband dug a trench down the first field they would lay a cable and bring it to us. They fixed the wires to a tree and connected across the last field to the house. Each evening he would go out after work and dig and at last we had a light and no more oil lamps. It was only strong enough for lights and nothing else.

I had to cook on an open fire with an oven at the side and push the fire under it to get the oven hot.

One day a Stoat came in the living room and we thought the cat would get it but it was too frightened. We managed to get the Stoat out in the end.

There was an outside toilet in a shed but we bought a chemical Elson one.

After a while we bought a Calor Gas cooker to cook on and we had to buy cylinders of gas to fix to the cooker.

The nearest Grocery Shop was at the end of Station Road which was at the end of our back garden.

At night the trains used a siding line to leave trucks all night and they would be full of coal. No one ever took any of the coal people were very honest.

One winter the stream that ran at the bottom of the second field flooded and came halfway up the field.

Every fortnight a Draper man called at the Farm Cottages and had a suitcase full of clothes to sell.

Each Saturday a Greengrocer man with a horse and cart came and i bought cabbage, potatoes, etc from him.

I didn't always buy in the summer as we had a big garden with all vegetables, raspberries, plums and apple trees.

We had fresh milk from the farm each day.

One day a cat fell in the well next door and drowned. So both cottages had no water. We had buckets of water from the farm till it was safe to use our water again, as ours came from the well into our pump.

We had to go to Patchway Station to order our coal from Hayward and Barton, they had a shed in a yard there and we were still rationed with coal and only a certain few cwts.

Written by Elizabeth (Betty) Wyatt age 82. March 2010.

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