Sepia Saturday - Family Homes Down the Generations

Sepia Saturday give bloggers an opportunity to share their family history through photographs.

This week's theme is ancestral homes.




My Danson ancestral home - but not quite what I envisaged!

Trap Farm, Carleton, near Poulton-le-Fylde Lancashire, c.1998. 

 

Trap Farm, c.1998

My first knowledge of Trap Farm as my ancestral home came from obtaining the birth certificate of my great grandfather' James Danson.    I found the farm on the current Ordnance Survey Map and set out to find it on a visit to the Fylde c.1998.  

Situated amidst fields on what is now a busy road, it was a sorry sight - dilapidated and overgrown.

In the 1841 Census, 30 year old Henry (my great great grandfather) was living there with his wife Elizabeth (Calvert), five daughters - Betty, Grace, Mary, Margaret and Ellen, his much older brother Peter and two servants.

By the time of the 1851 Census,  it was a household of 13. Henry was described as a farmer of 31 acres. Eldest daughter (now married)  Elizabeth was there  with her three sisters and her husband Thomas Bailey, whilst second daughter Grace had left home.  But there were now two sons - John and Henry  plus Henry's brother  Peter and two servants.   How did they all fit into what looked a small farmhouse?  My great grandfather James, born 1852 at Trap Farm, plus another daughter Jane,  later completed the family.

By the time of the next census in 1861 the Danson family was no longer at Trap.

Two years ago I returned to Carleton,  fully expecting Trap Farm to be wiped off the map and replaced by a modern housing estate.   To my surprise it was still there, but was undergoing a transformation into a modern home.

I recently made contact with a third cousin whose great grandmother Elizabeth Danson, eldest daughter of Henry and Elizabeth,  was born at Trap Farm, and he sent me a more recent photograph.

Trap Farm in 2011


******************



I am the baby -
with my Dad in our back garden,  

My first home was a rented end-terraced house on the edge of Blackpool, Lancashire.  My memories are of open fires,  and an  icy front room used for special occasions (birthday parties, Christmas plus my piano lessons)  when the fire was lit.   The living room at the back was the hub of family life. 

 

The kitchen was small and basic,  It was rather dark and gloomy with a solid back door and little light getting in.   A pantry with a cupboard with a mesh door was the primitive fridge!    Washing (always on a Monday when my mother donned  a cross-over overall and put her hair in a turban),  was done by hand and then put through a mangle to dry either outside on the clothes line or  on an overhead pulley. The other alternative was a steaming clothes horse around the open fire.

  

As the end house of the terrace,  we had plenty of space down the side  for my brother and I to play - he in his  pedal car and myself with my tricycle and doll's pram.  I remember tall  pink and purple lupins in the garden and I pretended they were ladies at a ball and curtseyed and danced to them - but only when my brother was not around to tease me!

It was an event when we heard the rag and bone man passing by on his horse and cart.  We also had a lorry coming around selling drinks and it was a treat was to get  in a stone jar sarsaparilla- a forerunner of Coca Cola? 

We were one of the first people to get a television in 1953, so the house was crowded around it to watch the Queen's Coronation.  We also got a phone then, largely because my father worked away a lot and it was a way to keep in touch - so we felt we were living a modern life in the new Elizabethan age.
 

My "second" home was my grandfather's house, (right) which he bought in 1924 - I have the receipt for the deposit of £67.   It looks quite big, but, with only three small bedrooms, it must have still been a squash for parents, 3 daughters and two sons who all lived at home until they married. The front door had a round stained glass window which I thought was very posh. 

Half way up the side wall was a small door which revealed the coal chute where the coal men emptied  their sacks down into a small cellar under the stairs. My uncle later took on the hard task to clear it all out to create a much needed "glory hole". The side trellissed gate was later taken down and a driveway created to take my uncle's car.  The former hen house at the back then became the garage. 

The large gardens were my grandfather's and later uncle's joy - with floral displays in the  front and vegetables and fruit  grown at the back and the scene for many a family photograph. There was one surprising feature about the house, though - it did not have electricity until the late 1950's, because my grandfather refused to have it installed. I remember my aunt standing on a chair to light the ceiling gas lights, and ironing with a heated flat iron, and the flames from the gas cooker frightened me.

In 1954 we moved to our own semi-detached house not far away and my mother was delighted to have a Rayburn - a solid fuel cooker which she loved for making stews, soups, casseroles and baking - our home for two years before we were on the move again.
The village of Upper Poppleton (try saying it quickly!) was the scene of our next  home, near York when my father was transferred with his work from Lancashire to Yorkshire.



Home 1956-1961 at Upper Poppleton, near York.

This home  (left)  was going up in the world - a new build and detached. Instead of the two small downstairs rooms we now had a through lounge (all the fashion), fitted carpets, our first fridge and cumbersome  storage heaters to get at least some background heating. From the outside it hasn't changed much when this photograph was taken  a few years ago. 




1961 saw another move, this time north  to Edinburgh to a lovely  bungalow and our first central heating - bliss!  The colour scheme was rather strong - red units in the  kitchen and a bathroom with a yellow suite and black tiles, which my mother  could not wait to get rid of.  This was the last of my childhood homes - but all left me with happy memories I am pleased to share here.  

In our garden at Edinburgh - a family group photograph taken

before I set off for a year in the USA.

Adapted from a post of 2011

 

CLICK HERE TO SEE OTHER BLOGGERS' ANCESTERAL HOMES