Life In Rose Cottage, Castlewoods
1948-1955
From birth to aged about nine years old my family lived in Hornsey North London, my father was a commercial artist. Unfortunately the lead in the paint he worked with made him very ill indeed, he was told by the doctor to get a job outdoors for his health’s sake. So with a large drop in income, he got a job as a park keeper in Castlewood near Severndroog Castle. With that was Rose Cottage.
My memories of that lovely little cottage remain with me still, it only had gas lighting and only had cold running water, any hot water had to be boiled in a kettle, or from a tiny Ascot heater over the deep butler sink, as you stepped inside the front door on the left was a walk in pantry, straight in front was the living room, which had a small open fire, the only heating in the entire cottage. Off the living room to the right was a small cloakroom, out of the living room to the left was a very tiny kitchen, then three small bedrooms and a bathroom with a separate toilet. Attached to the side of Rose Cottage was a barn where we children kept all our pets, a cat called Kitty, a dog called Tina, two white rabbits and a lot of white mice.
As I said before, I was nine, my brother Barry was 8, my sister Gay 7 and my little brother Joe was 2yrs old, as young children living in the woods was wonderful, we were free to play, we built dens out of branches, ferns and twigs, and camped out in them sometimes. Cowboys and Indians was another favourite game. We climbed all the trees near the cottage, especially the pear tree in the garden. When it was conker time we collected thousands of them, and played conkers for months. The other games I remember are five stones, marbles, flicking cigarette cards, cats cradle, hop scotch and of course I must not forget hide and seek. Just over the garden wall of Rose Cottage is Stoney Alley which I always thought was dark and spooky, but I overcame my fears when the sweet chestnut trees dropped their nuts, we all collected them, took them home to mum, who put them in the ashes of the fire to cook, they were delicious.
We all went to the Deansfield school, which was a very long walk, down the steps of the rose garden, sometimes when there we punched the Redwood tree I don’t really know why, except we knew their bark was soft, then on with the walk through the line of yew trees, down more steps, past the shelter in the hedge, down the field to Diarsie Road to school, I still remember the head mistresses name, it was Miss Begby, my teacher was Mr Donovan a truly marvellous teacher, he got me through my 11 plus, then I went to Catford County School for girls.
Part of my dad’s job was to put the flag up and take it down at sunset, so every evening he used to take us up to the top of the castle with him, the view up there was amazing, I used to run up the stairs without stopping, I seem to remember the cross railings up there were a little loose and rusty even back then. As a Park Keepers wage was very poor then, my mother took a part time job looking after the teashop at the bottom room of the castle, at weekends we helped her by collecting all the cups and washing up. When food was really short, dad would sit behind the front door, put his 410 shotgun through the letter box and wait for the rabbits or pigeons to come up on the bank opposite, once dad got two rabbits with one shot, we had rabbit stew for days. The grey squirrels were another source of money, if you shot one you could get 1/= (5p) today’s money. Another job all us children got was collecting branches and twigs for firewood, at least that was free in the woods. As the oldest child, on Tuesdays after school, I had to walk to the Co-op near the Red Lion pub on Shooters Hill, to get the family allowance of 8/= (40p) then, to get mums shopping and carry it all the way home.
At weekends if dad was on duty at the putting green, he used to let us go round it, again and again, by the time we left Castlewood we were all excellent putters and could go round in scratch. As my sister and I got older, we collected flowers and leaves and learnt their names, and dad taught us their Latin names which I can still remember now, we were also keen on the I Spy books on birds and butterflies, of which there were many in the woods. As my brothers got older, they went fishing for tadpoles and sticklebacks, my brother Barry collected birds’ eggs; they both rode their bikes a lot.
During the winter when it was cold and snowy, the woods looked like a fairyland, but as we only had the one fire in the cottage the only warm room was the living room, all the other rooms had ice on the inside of the windows. My one lovely memory of cold days was sitting all together round the fire with a large piece of bread on a toasting fork, toasting it by the fire then putting butter on it. Toast today does not taste as good as that did.
We left Castlewood when I was about fifteen, when we moved to Jackwoods in the lodge, where my mum had another baby girl. After an idyllic childhood we all did well in life, I became a nurse in the QARANC, my brother went to work in the Queen Mother’s household, my younger brother Joe went to Hatton Garden in a diamond merchants. One more thing about the cottage is to look at it from the front you think its built on one level, but it’s on two, at the back downstairs was the park keepers bothy, the shed for the gardeners tools and two garages for the tractors.
Joan Smye
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Rose Cottage in 2007
