Above : Ivy and Tom Batten at the Freemasons Arms, Chepstow.

The old grate had to be cleaned of the grease and black leaded, the hearth had to be whitened and about 3 buckets of ash got up, the stone floor washed and rubbed over with stone freezing, but it wasn't clean for an hour before it wanted doing again. We children had to our bath on a Saturday night, the old washing boiler on again, I remember the big tin bath running out all over the kitchen so Mother let us bath in the breadpan, we thought that was wonderful, anyway before the bathing evening was over my brother had been jumping up and down all of a sudden the bottom came out, there must have been a crack that Mother didn't know about, I remember Mother saying "Don't let your Dad know, he'll have a fit bathing you in the breadpan".

On a Saturday morning I had to clean all the knives and forks and spoons, we used to rub the knives on a board with freestone. There used to be piles of shoes to clean, old shoes and best shoes. The court had to be scrubbed down and we had a very long wall that we used to sit on, that had to be scrubbed as well, the back of the house brushed up and the paths down to the closet, which had to be scrubbed out with lime to keep them fresh.

When I now look back and see how hard our dear Mother and Father worked to bring up such a big family, while now we have a life of a Lady and Gentleman.| Previous |

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