I was doing a blog post over on my other blog A Year of Modern Rationing and talking about 'dip butties' and reminiscing about my childhood home., When I finished and published the post I decided to Google my former home out of interest and found these photos.
It's absolutely fascinating. These photos are from were from when it was on the market back in 2007 when it sold for £219,000. My Nana bought it for around the £1000 mark in 1958, and while she had the upstairs with the smallest bedroom slightly converted to a kitchen, me, my younger brother and my parents lived downstairs, we all shared the upstairs bathroom.
It is now valued at over £323,000 ... WOW!!
The kitchen looks completely different to the room that we used as lounge/kitchen/playroom/television room, with a little pantry off it containing an old 1950's gas cooker, a slightly newer gas fridge and the Belfast sink, with the understairs are being our larder. Tins of food on the shelves and bags containing vegetables on the floor.
This room was mine and my brothers bedroom, with Grahams bed being along the wall where the sofa is now and mine being out of shot, coming out from the alcove at the left-hand side of the marble fireplace.
What is now the dining room was my parents bedroom and is actually the front room of the house.
Upstairs and this was my Nana's living room, with the lovely bay widow looking out over the street. And yes, that is my Nana's original fireplace 😀
This room overlooking the back garden was my Nana's bedroom and was decorated in shades of cream and baby pink with a boarded up fireplace ...
...with a row of Goebel china monks on the mantlepiece.
Two rooms not shown on the estate agents details are the old fashioned bathroom with the black and white tiled colour scheme and icy cold lino floor, and the room that Nana used as her kitchen, the smallest of the bedrooms. With her 1950's kitchen cabinet (similar to this one but painted cream) in the alcove beside the fireplace and a fitted 1950's sink unit with a little instant hot water boiler above ...
... and a Baby Belling cooker like this one but with two round hotplates stood next to it.
The back garden is almost the same.
The little walled area for tiny plants that my Dad built, that led to the coal bunkers has gone, as have the coal bunkers themselves. But the grass is still in the same shape and the little brick built outhouses are still there. The one in shot is where me and my Dad stored our bikes ... I went everywhere on my secondhand bike until I was 13... and the shed to the right of this one was my Dad's woodworking and hoarding space.
Wow, this has been a trip down memory lane.
My childhood stomping ground.
Have you ever been tempted to Google your childhood home, or go back there ... I did drive past the house about ten years ago and had a quick peak ... or do any of you actually still live nearby or actually there?
It's a good time to look back at our old lives while our current lives are mostly in a state limbo.
Sue xx
Isn't google a wonderful thing to take you back through the years, I have found every home I have lived in except for the very first where I was born in 1956, all that remains is a portion of the old railing. I would love to have one of those 1950's cabinets now, we had one in our early 1960's kitchen along with a fold down formica table, by then we had quite a large house which went with my Dad's job in the gas board, there was a huge gasholder in our back yard, no heating upstairs, Mum used to iron the sheets on the bed whilst we stood by the bed , then we dived in.That house is now four one bedroom tiny flats and our lovely front garden tarmaced over. Thank you for sharing your memories, it has sent me off too, sometimes hard but happy days.
ReplyDeleteYou're very brave going back to look at your previous homes. I've only done it once when I went back to my childhood home in South Wales ( near Carmarthen ) and I wished I hadn't as I discovered I preferred to remember my homes as they were when I lived there. I've lived in five homes since then and I've never once gone back and looked a them or googled them! Fiona x
ReplyDeleteI was born in a house that had been in my family a long, long time. My father had been born there as well. We sold it when I was 7, and it came on the market following the death of that purchaser around 20 years ago. Husband and I seriously considered buying it but went for the one we live in now instead. I still sort of regret not buying it.
ReplyDeleteIt was only yesterday I googled my old boarding school which closed down many years ago, not long after I left aged 12 in 1973. It is now luxury flats and I can just about identify dormitories from the views from the windows - as I hated the school it left me feeling very strange.
ReplyDeleteI like the red brick of your former family home and how it has changed in some ways and is the same in others. My family home in Wisconsin was sold a few years ago and the exterior is the same but they essentially gutted it and turned it into what I would call a mansion. It overlooks a lake.
ReplyDeleteThat was very interesting, thank you.
ReplyDeleteI don't know where my brain has been , but I keep meaning to check out your other blog and see how you are getting along. Be there soon.
The last house I lived in with my parents is still standing. They bought it for $56K in 1976. Mum sold it for $550K in 2005. It's currently worth $1.7 million. Nothing special, just in a now, very expensive place to live. Absolutely no desire to go back. Too crowded, too expensive, and no one I care to know still lives in the area.
ReplyDeleteFascinating post Sue. I hope you enjoyed doing it and your Mum enjoys reading it.
ReplyDeleteUntil a few years back I still had a connection to the house I grew up in.
It was purchased, brand new, in 1969 for £6,750.
In 2019 the house next door (it is a semi) sold for £565,000 after the death of the lady who had lived there since I was a kid.
I was born in 1951 in Crumpsall Hospital in Manchester and went home to a house in Wythenshawe, that all I know about that house. In about 1953 we moved to Blackley M/c and lived right behind my primary school. Google earth shows that the school and the houses were demolished and a housing estate built. Our next 2 houses in Blackley are still there with very little changes made to them. Both my grandparents homes are still there with no exterior changes as well. We left England in 1966.
ReplyDeleteHow glorious!! We call that 1950s kitchen cabinet a "Hoosier cabinet" here in the USA. I sure would love to have your Mom's cabinet today. Heavenly! ~Andrea xoxo
ReplyDeleteLovely trip down Memory Lane for us all I think - I remember those kitchen cabinets - for some years - until the birth of my son - my first husband and I lived in a bed sit. It was a large room in a lovely house and our 'larder' was a kitchen cabinet exactly like that one.
ReplyDeleteWhat lovely memories, I'm sure your mum will be pleased to see that.
ReplyDeleteThe first thing I did with Google on my new laptop was show my 92 year old dad where he lived (age 7) in Vauxhall, unfortunately the street was bombed to bits but we did find his nearby school and church, he was amazed and happy to see it as he would never get back.
What a lovely trip down Memory Lane Sue:) I google all the time although the house I was born in (home birth) was demolished in the 60's. I love to take a walk around Manchester on google Earth eh happy days♥ xoxo
ReplyDeleteThat's so very lovely, thank you for sharing the memories. xx
ReplyDeleteSue I love your trip down memory lane! It is a trip I have made many times on Google. When I was growing up we moved every two or three years so I lived in many homes. I have visited all that are still left standing on Google but the Google trip that means the most to me is the one to my Grandmother's house because it was a steady home for me. Her house is gone now but I still occasionally visit on Google the spot where it used to stand.
ReplyDeleteWhat a lovely home you spent your early years in. I just love the old brick homes.
ReplyDeleteGod bless.
Unfortunately my childhood home was compulsory purchased by Liverpool corporation in 1966 which forced my parents hand to move to Essex. The houses were being demolished for flyover between the 2 football grounds. It was never built due to church land the local convent refused to sell. They were forced to build new houses!! I've been back numerous times to see how my birthplace has changed.
ReplyDeleteHow Brilliant that you found the pictures online and so many things unchanged.
ReplyDelete(Please can I pinch this idea for a blog post.......although I've just remembered to photo albums with old pictures are packed in a box already !!)
Of course you can pinch it, I bet Google Images and Google will be able to fill in many of the things you have packed away. I look forward to reading your version :-)
DeleteI love that style of suburban house they are always so roomy inside - also liked the grass at the back it is almost heart shaped. I have only one childhood home still standing - the first one we moved into in Stannington Sheffield - a tiny new semi back in 1956 and cost my dad about £1000. The later two homes have since been demolished and replaced by newer 'mansions' as they were both situated on sizeable pieces of land. My grandma's little terraced house in Darnall Sheffield is also no longer even though the cobbled street and lamposts remain and one of the student houses we lived in at Art College has also been demolished to make way for a Lidl! How interesting though that you could have a virtual wander around your past home. I must check to see if the Stannington one has ever been marketed so I can have a look around and see if it is as I remember.
ReplyDeleteMy grandfather built the house I lived in until I was 16, it was one of a pair of semi's, when he died the houses were left one for my uncle and one for my Grand mother until she died and then, under the terms of his will, it was my mothers. Grandma created about the rates (1950's) and she was told the two semis were the best looking houses in the street and therefore had a higher rateable value, to say she was not amused was to put it mildly. Grandma eventually went into a home and my mother and step father moved in, after having the house modernised. So it was in the family for a long number of years.(1917 - 1993) It was eventually sold in 1993 when my mother moved into a home after the house was flooded in a severe storm. It cost approx £500 to build, it was sold for £73,000 due to the flood damage and is now worth £395,000. It was very different to the next door house in that we had decorative plaster work on the ceiling and frieze above the picture rail in the living and dining rooms, the two rooms were divided by folding doors, the doors were closed in the winter, and opened in the summer to make a through room........ The large shed which Grandpa built at the bottom of the garden for grandmas workroom has gone, she was a tailoress and worked from home, the singer treadle sewing machine, which was her wedding present, long outlived her, as did the Revo electric cooker which is now in a local museum. The house still has its original windows and its black and white paintwork. I would love to see inside and see what it looks like now.
ReplyDeleteHi Sweet Blondie BlueEyes!
DeleteI hope you and OH are still doing well and enjoying your bungalow, It's good to see you posting on here. I still have that lovely quilt that you sent me.
Kim Cranson (Birmingham)
THANK YOU for all these lovely comments.
ReplyDeleteWhat great memories this post has thrown up, I'm so glad I did it. All I did to find the photos was use Google and Google Images and I just struck lucky. Perhaps I'll do it again for some of my other 15+ addresses, but the childhood home is always the most fascinating isn't it. Good luck if you decide to have a search around for your old homes. xx
What a lovely house and how the value has rocketed over the years. When I was 2 years old I, my parents and older sister moved into a brand new semi on a council estate. Mum thought it was the absolute bees knees even though it had no heating. There was a boiler at the back of the fireplace downstairs which gave us hot water when the fire had been lit in the winter, but then the water was cold during the summer! Grids at floor level in the bedrooms were supposed to heat them but hardly any useful heat was produced even when the fire was lit. Mum eventually had an immersion heater installed for hot water but never had heating installed even though she lived in the same house all of her life. She lived to 92 and left the house to my brother. He sold it to a young couple who modernised it. I would love to see it now 12 years later...
ReplyDeleteI googled my childhood home years ago and was able to find it with pictures of the inside. My sister always wanted to go back to the home and ask the current owners to let us in so we could look around. I never wanted to do that because I have the images in my memory and don't want them lost or replaced. I could see from the google photos that there had been some changes but I could see it the way I remembered it too. We moved out of that house to a new home which seemed like a mansion to me back then as it was larger than the little ranch of my childhood.
ReplyDeleteI don't live far from these homes and can drive by them if I want but I don't do that often.
Oh my. Just looked at a home on the street where I lived as a child in London. Now selling for £1.75M!
ReplyDeleteLet's just say it is out of my price range these days. Lol.
Sue, Mum read your blog but couldn't get in to comment. She say she loved it though. Graham. You remembered more than I do about the smaller details though. I wonder if the new owners ever found all my toy soldiers 'buried' in the garden!
ReplyDeleteOh, I could walk you round every room and every garden I have ever lived in.
DeleteIt's all in my head for posterity. New owners might have also found the tortoise shells buried in the little rose garden near the 'wash-house' shed 😄
I sold my parental home a couple of years ago, it's directly opposite our house!
ReplyDeleteHow lovely that your Grandma's fireplace is still in the house. I think I prefer the 1950s larder unit and Baby Belling to the fitted kitchen! xxx
I've googled old homes several times, having had at least 25 of them. I've usually been so disappointed. My favourite 1930's house was " modernised" within an inch of it's life and is horrible now.
ReplyDeleteI actually never thought to do this, but I just typed it in google maps and had a look. Thank you for my own trip down memory lane.
ReplyDeleteMy mom still lives in the house I grew up in! Dad would never move... if only this virus would go away, I could go and visit. I’ve not seen it, or her, for over a year now.
ReplyDelete