Memories of 12 Ranelagh Road

12 Ranelagh Road 2006

 

As soon as we arrived in Aston Clinton, John put in for a transfer back to the Isle of Wight and this came through in the minimum time possible, so, on the 28th of November 1985, we were on our way back to the island, ready to move in the next day. House prices had moved in exactly the right way for us in the intervening years, with our mainland home rocketing in value, whilst Isle of Wight prices had moved more slowly. This allowed us to buy our ‘forever home’ at 12 Ranelagh Road, Lake. This time, we had to make maximum use of the year’s bridging loan before Green End Street sold, for £49,850. We looked at three other properties before choosing Ranelagh Road, one in Queen Street, Sandown, one on the Broadway, that had belonged to a doctor and strangely had a spiral staircase right in the middle of a reception room and another that I believe was also on the Broadway. I remember walking down the 250 foot garden at Ranelagh Road on a sunny early evening and looking back at the house knowing it was the one I wanted. We had nearly disregarded it because of the strange layout. Rebecca was active in playing with the estate agents’ details and had retrieved it from the discard pile, perhaps because it looked like every child’s drawing of a house, with windows either side of a central door.

 

I know we phoned the agent from the telephone box on the seafront not far from the library to put the offer in. We were doing this as soon as the agents opened in the early morning. I have no idea why we didn’t just go to the estate agents in person. I can still remember the nerves whilst we waited to know it was ours. We were talking to Mr and Mrs *, the previous owners who had run it as a guest house, about our full price offer, £53,000, (I was taking no chances!) when a call came in with a lower offer and Mrs * telling them ‘it is not enough’.

 

The removal men were not impressed by the number of boxes of books, even though I had itemised this under ‘any unusual items’ on the form applying for a quote. They were heard to mutter something about, ‘I suppose there are more books under the floor-boards’. We spent the night before we moved in in a B & B in Sandown, waiting for the van to arrive.

 

This was another three story, unique property, double fronted and detached. It had been built about 1910 but had a 1930s’ feel. When we moved in, the semi basement (the rooms were ground level at the back but a slope meant that the ground came to windowsill level at the front) was completely separate. A condition of the mortgage was that we return this to a single dwelling. I was five months pregnant when we moved and eight months pregnant when the new staircase was put in. The builder was terrified that I would go into labour whilst he was still working on the property. Over the years, I had the house woodworm proofed, double glazing put in to replace the draughty sash windows and a new roof put on.

 

Downstairs was a self-contained flat, with a living room, two bedrooms, a kitchen, toilet and shower. At various times, we let the kitchen, toilet, shower and one or two of the bedrooms. 

 

When we had the ground floor to ourselves, the bedrooms were spare bedrooms or used to contain anything that wouldn’t fit anywhere else but this part of the house was never the teenage den I thought it might become. Latterly, I decorated the smaller bedroom orange and yellow, two walls in each colour, painted the ceiling yellow and had an orange carpet. This was used as a spare bedroom. The living room was full of books as was the hallway at the bottom of the stairs. Until the girls were grown up, I used the basement living room as a study, although later moved the office upstairs as it was sunnier and warmer. At this point, the downstairs living room became a dining room and was always decorated for Christmas as well as upstairs. A piano went in here too.

 

The downstairs kitchen was used as utility room; the spare fridge and cooker were always useful at Christmas and it was ideal for drying washing. Martha used to lie on the worktop to have her long hair washed in the sink, especially helpful when she had nits that needed treating.

 

Upstairs were three bedrooms, a toilet and the smallest bathroom imaginable. I had many and various plans as to how a larger bathroom could be created but in the end, moved out before they could be put into action. This was probably just as well as they would have been hugely expensive. I have two memories of the bathroom. Firstly, when we had to take the side off the bath in order to rescue Martha’s hamster that had found its way underneath. The other recollection is bound up with making ginger beer but this makes no sense, as we did that in the kitchen, Maybe it was just trying to wash everything on the occasion when it exploded all over everywhere on the day before we were going on holiday.

 

Quite early on, the upstairs doors were all painted different colours, the bathroom was burgundy, the toilet was white, my bedroom was moss green, Rebecca’s bedroom was dark blue and Martha’s pale blue. I think this was my version of mum’s multi-coloured ceiling at Sundridge Road. The laundry basket was on the landing. For a long time, this was a wicker ‘Aladdin’ basket with what was meant to be a seat on top. No one ever sat on it but the children did play in it. While the girls were growing up there always seemed to be a cardboard box full of stuff ‘waiting to go downstairs’ or actually things that didn’t quite have anywhere to go, on the landing. All the bedrooms, on the top floor and in the basement had coloured sinks in; in all there were nine sinks or wash-basins to clean. Downstairs and Martha’s bedroom had yellow sinks, Rebecca’s was blue and mine was green, although I eventually replaced this with white. In fact, the allocation of bedrooms was solely down to basin colour as the two largest rooms were a similar size.

 

No moving bedrooms in this house. I had the front bedroom on the left of the stairs. I did however move furniture round within this room. For most of the time, I had a deeply unsuccessful green carpet put in this room that was very thin, showed the dirt and wore badly. I had chosen this carpet but was glad when I felt it could be replaced with a softer alternative. Duvets were in fashion in this house and I had two sets with orangy brown and green diamonds on, with curtains to match. Although the ground floor rooms were always painted, on the middle and top floors we used wallpaper at various stages, often painted woodchip. I had a beige and green swirly frieze at picture rail height. For the last few years in this house my wardrobe and dressing table unit was relegated downstairs and replaced with pine wardrobes, dressing table, chest of drawers and bedside tables. This involved moving my bed, by this time king size with a brown leather headboard, to the wall opposite the door instead of the door wall. I had a wicker screen with a green waffle throw over to obscure the view of me in bed from the open door. The cotton curtains were replaced with dark brown velour. As a former guest house, all the internal doors had keys. A day or two before Christmas I was wrapping presents in my bedroom and locked the door, so I didn’t have to clear them away before going to Tescos. Somehow, I contrived to lose the key in Tescos and we had to break the door down.

 

Rebecca’s bedroom was decorated blue, her favourite colour, quite soon after we arrived. The carpet that came with the house was disposed of by throwing it out of the upstairs window and replaced with a blue carpet with a small pattern, a bit like snowflakes. Initially, the wallpaper had clouds on and the curtains had a similar pattern. Unfortunately, almost as soon as it was done, the soot seeped through where a chimney breast had once been. Later she had plain blue woodchip walls and a blue frieze. Her white furniture was replaced with black flat pack, including a low cabin bed with a large shelf unit/bedside cabinet round the headboard. She also had a long piece of white laminate balanced on two slightly higher than usual white cupboards to make a desk, that required a high stool to use. At this point, she collected frogs and I sewed brightly covered frog material on her black duvet cover and made cushion covers in the same material for the bolster cushions that went round her bed to make it resemble a settee. There were of course plenty of bookshelves and a high shelf along the long wall at the height of the top of the door for her cuddly toys. Each year these were taken down and given a sound thrashing in the garden to get rid of the dust. This room had a window at the front and at the side, so with the sink in one corner and the door in another, had less usable space than its size might suggest.

 

Martha’s room started by having a teddy bear frieze and then was redecorated with ‘sun and moon’ wallpaper, curtains and bedding. The carpet here was blue as well. Later she painted over the wallpaper in a bright pink. There was a built-in cupboard by the door that was used for bits and pieces. Martha too had a cabin bed at first but this was replaced with a high metal bed, like a top bunk, so furniture could go underneath and later a futon. Her white wardrobe was replaced by one with blue trims.

 

On the middle ‘living’ floor, the main living room was on the left of the front door. This had a large square bay window with a broad sill that I turned into a window seat. We kept games under the seat. I had another window put in the back wall. This did make it lighter but still didn’t give me a view of the garden as it had to be higher than was ideal to avoid the sloping glass roof of the downstairs kitchen below. The girls used to bounce from the chairs to the settee in an effort to get round as much of the room as possible without touching the floor. For a long time, I kept the previous owner’s swirly 1970s’ green, brown and orange carpet. Only a few years before I left did I replace this with a pink carpet, painted the ceiling and walls pale yellow and the skirting moss green. The curtains were green as well and it was at this point that I covered the three-piece suite in green. I also had the downstairs doors dipped so they were back to the natural wood. We had an MFI cupboard and display unit with a drop-down flap glass section in the middle. Latterly, I replaced this with an outsized Victorian pine chest of drawers. At the same time, I swapped the black metal TV stand for a set of wooden drawers. This room was always a bit dark and underused, although it did do a short stint as the office.

 

On the right of the front door was a room that spent most of its life as the playroom, before becoming the office. It had a door to the kitchen that in the end I blocked with furniture to make more space on both sides of the door. As the playroom, the room contained a run of cupboards and drawers round the two walls between the door to the hall and the door to the kitchen. The girls had one cupboard each and there was a corner section under a flap that had dressing-up clothes in. There were also full height bookcases on these walls. There was a bed settee between the two windows. I was sitting here building a Lego castle with Rebecca and mum when my waters broke, heralding Martha’s arrival. The room had a sage green carpet that wore incredibly well and I bought some expensive wooden venetian blinds for the two windows. The windowsills were only about a foot from the floor and the blinds were always something I was particularly fond of. I was sorry to leave them behind when I moved but they wouldn’t fit anywhere else. This was the room where, to everyone’s incredulity, I papered the walls with brown wrapping paper. It was very awkward to handle, as it was so soft but it looked really good. I added port hole mirrors and developed a nautical theme. A piece of furniture that has travelled from house to house was a small wooden chest of drawers that started its life being yellow but which I painted white as part of a girl guide badge. Latterly it had pens and crayons in it. Another historic piece of furniture was granny’s card table. The green baize was long ago replaced with contact but it has stood the test of time.

 

When I moved in, there was an awkward corner in the kitchen by the door and a walk-in larder. Apart from the larder door, the kitchen had three other doors, to the hall, playroom and garden, a window that was too low to put anything under, a chimney breast and a radiator, so although it was large and square, it had virtually no wall space. I moved the door, so the awkward corner became part of the hall and a place to hang coats. The door to the larder was blocked up and the larder turned into a toilet, accessed from the hall. I also had the chimney breast removed to make a flat wall. Fairly soon after moving in, I had kitchen units put in, with a hessian look finish that was quite difficult to keep clean. The lino we chose was greenish hexagons. The men who hard-boarded the floor prior to the lino being put down, put a nail through a water pipe, which caused a certain amount of chaos. Once the chimney breast was removed, the dresser was put on the wall opposite the back door, later I had a full height green cupboard put in next to it. The gas cooker, with its eye height grill, was to the left of the window. Initially, we had a pine table with two benches but later this was put in the conservatory and replaced with a tiled green table and matching chairs. Very shortly before I left, I had a new kitchen with cream, shaker-style cupboards and a built-in gas cooker. The new lino was pine wood effect and quite difficult to keep clean. I was very proud of the new kitchen but didn’t enjoy it for long. For years we had guinea-pig hutches in our hall. ​