|
"The Nook was situated more or less at the Waldgrave Road end of the footbridge leading into Warnerville Road. Just the other side of the road in the photo is the dip of the railway, and the houses in the background are those in Oakhill Park. The Dalys' shop was a general one, converted from two front rooms of the house which was about the biggest in the crescent forming The Nook. My Mum tells how my gran would make lemonade and put a jug of it on a table outside the shop in summer for hikers (and others presumably) who passed that way.
There was a tap to serve all the houses in The Nook and on winter mornings it was often frozen and unusable, but Gran had the foresight to retain a kettle of water in the evenings so she could pour boiling water over it. Apparently the toilet was a midden on which my gran expended much chloride of lime, and the muck-cart came to empty it twice a week. This sounds little better than the slums in the Courts, but at least there was a toilet for each house and life there seems to have been very respectable and enjoyable. Something like Flora Thompson's 'Lark Rise to Candleford'.
The Drawbridges - the local gentry - lived in Olive Cottage, with a carriage and pair to take them to Childwall Church (Mum and her family walked). Mum was given scraps of material left over from the three Miss Drawbridges' new dresses, after their mother had seen her making dolls' clothes in the shop.
The bigger house on the corner of Heywood Road was owned by the Johnsons, who were comparatively new people and did not seem to enjoy the status of the Drawbridges. Mum might be a little jaundiced about them because, even though she and their daughter Edna would walk to school together (the 'tin' school at Broadgreen) Edna was told off by Mrs Johnson for allowing 'Nook children' into the house."
(To be continued)
|
|
