I'm cheating a bit this week and reprinting my mother's detailed description of her childhood home, as told to me in her 94th year.
The house in Fitzroy St has gone completely. It is almost as though nothing was ever
there. But it was a lovely old home once
so come with me and I’ll take you through the front gate and show you around.
The front path painted green sloped up slightly from the
road and then flattened out. Over the
picket gate was a trellis with honeysuckle and a red climbing rose called Black
Boy. These two were responsible for the lovely perfume which everybody smelt as
the neared our home. On either side of
the path was a privet hedge and then lawn.
The path wasn’t very long to a step and then on to a wide opening on to
the verandah. Either side of the opening
there was timber so far, and then lattice.
On the verandah, which was about 7 or 8 feet wide were an assortment of
chairs – deck and cane with cane tables holding magazines and cups and saucers.
Directly opposite the front step was the front door and to
the left of the door, the name “Roscrea” in gold letters on a black
background. Roscrea is the old market
town in the middle of Tipperary, Ireland, 2 miles from the Whitten family farm,
“Fancroft” where my Irish grandfather, Anthony Whitten, was born.
Later our house was
renamed, “The Meadows”, by my mother but what happened to the nameplate
“Roscrea” I do not know. I doubt if I
even queried why it was changed. These
sorts of things were just accepted by children; we weren’t asked for our opinion.
I wonder what my father thought for he would have been the one that had named
it, no doubt as a tribute to his father who had come a long way to settle in a
new land. Perhaps my father made a
comment about it but as he only lived in the house at weekends he might have
thought Mum should have right too. So,
“The Meadows” it became and nothing was changed inside the house which was just
as well.
At either end of the verandah were doors, one leading to the
boys’ room (the one on the left) and the one leading to the girls’ room on the
right.
On opening the front door, we step on a carpet runner which
ran to the dining room, but on either side of the hall were two doors. One
opened in to the guest bedroom and the other into the lounge room. More about those
rooms later.
The phone was on the wall on the right just before the
dining room and curtains, velvet I think, were parted just before stepping into
the dining room.
This was a fairly narrow room and held a dining table which
could be made larger by inserting “leaves”.
There were about 8 chairs – like the table they were made of oak. At the end of this room was an open fireplace
with a few easy chairs grouped about.
Also this room contained a cabinet which contained a wireless. This was a present from a Methodist minister
to Mum for minding his young son while his wife was in Sydney for an operation.
Over the fireplace, high up on the wall were nicely framed
photographs of Dad’s parents, Anthony and Charlotte Whitten and on the
mantelpiece were photos of family and relatives. One was of my American cousin Maurice whom I
would eventually meet in the 1980s.
Halfway along the wall was a small window where food could
be passed from the kitchen. At the
fireplace end, there was a door leading out to a verandah room, and at the
other end, (off the hallway) another door which led into a room which was
separate until Mum knocked out the wall between it and the lounge room, making
it all one big room. There was carpet on
the dining room floor and a door at the hallway end which led into the kitchen.
The kitchen was large, as most kitchens were in those
days. This house had been an old farm
house in the early days. Fitzroy St was
one of the earliest streets laid out in Quirindi and was named after Governor Fitzroy. There are Fitzroy Sts everywhere, including
Dubbo where Fitzroy St is only a few hundred yards up the road from my home.
Mum spent a lot of time in the kitchen and no wonder as it
was cold where we lived and she had a fuel stove to warm up the room. In the summer time the trees and shrubs
allowed it to cool off after she let the stove go out during the afternoon.
At the eastern end of the kitchen was the fuel stove, a
“Beacon Light” with a lighthouse on the door to the firebox. Sitting on the top of the stove were about
six kettles including a little black one which Mum used to put into a hold at
the top for a quick boil. Also there was
a big black fountain which sat at the side and always had hot water in it. My mother used this water for washing
up. To the right of the stove was a tap
which came through the wall from a tank.
This was where my father sat and bathed my face after I got thrown off
the horse. There was a window ledge
above the tap where Mum’s numerous cats sat and waited to be fed.
Off to the right was a pantry where the washing up was
done. It had benches for dishes and
shelves for tinned foods, sauces, jams etc.
Mum always kept a good larder because she was a long way from town and
if anyone popped in she could be prepared.
There was a big kitchen table and chairs in abundance. There were smaller tables under the window or
servery into the dining room. On these
tables were big meat covers and dishes.
Over the fireplace was a shelf for holding canisters and a big clock was
in the middle of the shelf.
At the other end of the room was a kitchen cabinet which held
the usual kitchen cups, saucers and plates, glasses, vases, kitchen
tablecloths, milk jug covers and meat dishes and other odds and ends used in a
kitchen. The kitchen had lino on the
floor and a calendar or two on the wall – calendars were given out at Christmas time
by all the shops so one ended up with an assortment.
There was a still life print of fruit on one of the walls
and on one of the tables was an electric jug and a toaster which Mum only used
if the fire went out. The numerous
kettles kept the tea cups filled with tea on and off all day and the toast was
made sitting in front of the fire. At
the beginning of the week and during the week there was ample short wood for
the stove but if Mum ran out of these she’d pull half a tree into the kitchen
and prop it up on chairs. The lino
always had holes from sparks and Mum always had bruises on her legs as the tree
slowly got closer to the fire.
The back door of the kitchen led out to an enclosed porch
where there was a drip safe and ferns and then about four big steps down to the
ground again. The back yard was enclosed
by a wire netting fence to keep the chooks out and there were gates at each
end; one led down to the lavatory and the other out to a driveway.
Not far from the back steps was an old dairy which Dad used
to store chook feed etc and off this was the laundry.
Mrs Passfield did Mum’s washing and ironing. The laundry had an uneven floor and must have
taxed her. The copper was where clothes
were boiled up and then they were hauled out of it by a clothes prop and into a
tub to be rinsed and then to another for bluing and then rinsed again before
hanging out.
Back to the kitchen.
There was another door which led out of the kitchen and into the
bathroom. This room only had one window
in it and was fairly dark. There was a
wash stand with a big jug and bowl and a chip heater which had to be lit after
the chips were set alight. We had a
white enamel bath and a linen press in this room too. There was a door off this room which led
into Mum and Dad’s bedroom and a door from this room which led back into the
girls’ room. (which led off the front verandah).
In both Mum and Dad’s room and the girls’ room there was
lino on the floors with mats. Three single beds were in the girls’ room and two
wardrobes and a dressing table. In Mum
and Dad’s room was a double bed, wardrobe and dressing table and easy chairs.
The boys’ room had beds, wardrobe, dressing table and
chairs.
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| Mum and her sister Joan with their parents at "The Meadows" - about 1941 |
