Home: The Story of Everyone Who Ever Lived in Our House

Home: The Story of Everyone Who Ever Lived in Our House
Julie Myerson

Ever thought about all the people who lived in your house before you? Julie Myerson did, and set out to learn as much as she could about their fascinating lives.This is the biography of a house, the history of a home. It’s an ordinary house, an ordinary home, and ordinary people have lived there for over a century. But start to explore who they were, what they believed in, what they desired and they soon become as remarkable, as complicated and as fascinating as anyone.That is exactly what Julie Myerson set out to do. She lives in a typical Victorian terraced family house, of average size, in a typical Victorian suburb (Clapham) and she loves it. She wanted to find out how much those who preceded her loved living there, so she spent hours and hours in the archives at the Family Record Office, the Public Record Office at Kew, local council archives and libraries across the country. Like an archaeologist, she found herself blowing the dust off files that no-one had touched since the last sheet of paper in them was typed. As she scraped the years away, underneath she found herself embroiled in a detective hunt as, bit by bit, she started to piece together the story of her house, built in 1877, as told by its former occupants in their own words and deeds. And so she met the bigamist, the Tottenham Hotspur fanatic, the Royal servant, the Jamaican family and all the rest of the eccentric and entertaining former occupants of 34 Lillieshall Road. The book uncovers a lost 130-year history of happiness and grief, change and prudence, poverty and affluence, social upheaval and technological advance.Most of us are dimly aware that we are not the first person to turn a key in our front door lock, yet we rarely confront the shadows that inhabit our homes. But once you do – and Julie Myerson shows you how – you will never bear to part from their company again. This is your home's story too.

HOME

The story of everyone who ever lived in our house

JULIE MYERSON

DEDICATION (#uccec0c5d-2dcb-50e0-8c52-7f822f7db228)

For

Elsie Hayward 1883

and

Jamie Jess Pidgeon 1984

LIST OF ILLUSTRATION (#uccec0c5d-2dcb-50e0-8c52-7f822f7db228)

‘Do you know what a census is?’ (#ulink_b4d74150-2299-5459-bc83-d037807f12e5)

‘the layers of paper curled and rolled off’ (#ulink_8091bc51-a7f9-58c2-89da-117c818f0775)

‘blonde and dimpled and dungareed’ (#ulink_e9d73299-5fa6-5fb7-bccd-c4274548a471)

‘my kids and their scary sharpness’ (#ulink_c733fe0d-236b-5c5d-b116-97690331acc3)

‘here she is again … cross-legged and tender faced’ (#ulink_7a95aa52-5602-5434-8bbe-6d0f15636ef9)

‘he knows the snowman will melt’ (#ulink_d010f6fc-cf8d-5a8e-8c22-d1d07d3d15b4)

‘you’d never in a zillion years let me have wallpaper like that’ (#ulink_cbffe49e-7280-55ca-ba64-fb43fc4d56ac)

‘you can’t possibly remember anything about being there’ (#ulink_2ecf9a18-c94e-5d00-8075-57f06a5c2181)

‘she can’t talk or do anything yet’ (#ulink_58fa5142-f96b-5f02-b88c-c150376835b6)

‘hair all slept-on, reading a story to an absorbed toddler’ (#ulink_e2e174d5-bc1e-5816-9f36-7f662cb4d694)

‘the sleepy-ecstatic time after the birth of a baby’ (#ulink_d9005511-607f-5bb0-b647-b78881f2fb9d)

‘someone else has done the same, felt the same’ (#ulink_336f472d-75d0-56f1-9e59-6b657ee05348)

‘I didn’t think I’d float’ (#ulink_02081c14-81a7-5a47-9ab2-37ffc9888913)

‘I lub you mummy’ (#litres_trial_promo)

‘I run my finger down column after column …’ (#litres_trial_promo)

‘the marriage was in a state and I wanted to be with my mum’ (#litres_trial_promo)

‘I bought that hat for two and six at Cecil Gee’ (#litres_trial_promo)

‘The wedding cake … costs £7.1 Os with the cake stand hired from Arding & Hobbs (#litres_trial_promo)

‘eyes lit up with a hot, happy smile’ (#litres_trial_promo)

‘He wouldn’t drink out there on the street.’ (#litres_trial_promo)

‘those sleeves were murder!’ (#litres_trial_promo)

‘and Alice our duck’ (#litres_trial_promo)

‘Peter is family. He and Phyll were in a fix …’ (#litres_trial_promo)

‘I think the bit of trouble was me coming along’ (#litres_trial_promo)

‘She was just … a bit of a lass.’ (#litres_trial_promo)

‘Inside, the papers are crumbling …’ (#litres_trial_promo)

‘the plan shows a new street 50 feet wide …’ (#litres_trial_promo)

‘the hedge I pruned last Sunday.’ (#litres_trial_promo)

‘the white columns so familiar to me.’ (#litres_trial_promo)

‘Joan’s mother’s sister … married Thomas Spawton, Lucy’s nephew.’ (#litres_trial_promo)

‘on holiday in Felixstowe’ (#litres_trial_promo)

‘Did she come back here to 34 Lillieshall Road at the end of that hot day in the photograph?’ (#litres_trial_promo)

‘Maslin … he’s the first occupant of 34 Lillieshall Road.’ (#litres_trial_promo)

‘a lot happens to me there’ (#litres_trial_promo)

‘That man knew all there was to know on the various ways of cooking meat.’ (#litres_trial_promo)

‘like a boy who’s been in the dressing-up box’ (#litres_trial_promo)

‘like a boy who’s been in the dressing-up box’ (#litres_trial_promo)

‘They get talking one cold February day in the Larkhall Tea gardens’ (#litres_trial_promo)

‘You know Francis & Sons, the men’s outfitters opposite?’ (#litres_trial_promo)