My grandmother’s house

Wyke Regis is a village and ancient parish in southern Dorset which looks out over the Isle of Portland to the south, Portland Harbour to the south and east, and Chesil Beach and the Fleet lagoon to the west.  Historically, the area gained a reputation for both smuggling and the looting of wrecks thanks to treacherous local currents and the long sweep of Chesil Beach on which many ships ran aground, then, during the 19^th century, the main industry was Whitehead’s Torpedo Factory employing around 400 people.  Nowadays, the village has grown to form part of the south-western suburbs of Weymouth, about halfway along the Jurassic Coast World Heritage Site.

In the 1920s and 1930s, my great grandparents Harry Collingwood and his wife Evelyn (née Twohey) owned, lived in, and ran the Wyke House Hotel, set in twelve acres of land on the hill just above of the old village.  My grandparents, their eldest daugher Elena and her husband Captain Neville Brock also lived in the hotel, along with their two children: my mother Elisabeth and her older brother John.  When war was declared in 1939, the hotel was requisitioned by the Admiralty, resulting in the indefinite closure of the hotel and my family relocating to the village of Portesham, approximately seven miles west towards the county town of Dorchester, for the duration of the war.

When the three-generation family returned to Wyke after the war, they took up residence in Westhill Cottage, close to the historic centre of the village.  Once a two-up-two down red-brick cottage, the building had been greatly extended in the late 19^th century to create a fashionable detached Victorian villa by the addition of several rooms over three floors attached to the front of the original cottage.  I am uncertain who owned the property, but my Collingwood and Brock predecessors lived there from about 1946 until the house was sold after my grandmother’s death in 1974.

My great grandfather, Harry Collingwood, died in the house in 1953.  Although he had lived in there for several years, he didn’t leave any obvious impression as there were no pictures of him nor other personal items that I can remember.  Family stories described him as a man of considerable stature and strength, whose death had been hastened by attempting to pull a roller meant for a horse.  

When I knew it, ‘the cottage’ was significantly taller than its neighbours and featured a white stucco exterior to the front and side elevations and a dark green-painted wooden balcony to one side supported by two iron poles.  The property was set back from the road and benefitted from a pretty front garden, with a small pedestrian gate on the right-hand side with a narrow path leading to the house, a low red brick wall with hedging along the front, and, to the left, were a pair of wooden gates painted dark green opening on to a short gravelled drive leading to a detached brick built outbuilding which had probably once been a small stable, but was then used as a garage for my grandmother’s car and for storage.  To the right of the house was a tall gate to an alleyway with a red brick wall at the edge of the property separating it from a military base known as Barrow Camp.  In my earliest memories the site was still operational and dotted with tented accommodation and soldiers drilling and parading, but the camp was vacated in the early 1960s leaving a large open space dotted with a few abandoned concrete bunkers.

A partially glazed conservatory with a terracotta tiled floor and wooden slatted shelves graced with potted geraniums in pots abutted the main house.  Even today I don’t care for the distinct but pungent scent of these familiar plants which can transport me back with memories of that conservatory.

The front door to the house featured the most exquisite rectangular and square Victorian etched glass panels in clear, red, and cobalt blue, and over the front door was a wooden plaque with a scallop shell motif and a motto, now forgotten, which my grandmother said was to be connected to the Brock surname.

Beyond the front door was a large but gloomy lobby with a heavily draped window to the alley and the brick wall just a few feet beyond, and stairs to the upper floors.  There were three painted Victorian panel doors, one to my grandparents’ sitting room to the left, another to an internal hallway leading to the back of the house, and the third door to a tiny scullery/kitchen known as ‘the cubby-hole’.  This entrance hall featured a fireplace, which I don’t think was ever lit, and no less than two imposing antique sideboards, a dark oak dining table with four chairs, and a further two dining chairs pushed against the wall.  As older children, we would eat our meals in that space, whilst the adults ate in my great-grandmother’s sitting room.  There was also a pyramid style telephone made from bakelite on a small stand, but any ‘trunk’ calls (outside the Weymouth area) had to be connected by a switchboard operator from the local telephone exchange.

My grandparents’ sitting room, which was to the left of the front door, featured a bay window with French doors, which I don’t ever recall being opened, an open fireplace, and a collection of memorabilia from my grandfather’s career in the Royal Navy which began in the 1890s and spanned two world wars.  It was like a museum: the walls were adorned with paintings and other pictures, including one of each of the ships on which he served, and two floor-standing glass cases contained scale models of HMS Hood and another British battlecruiser.   Dotted around the room were mementoes from key naval battles including small relics from the ill-fated Hood, which sank killing over 1,400 men, and German battleships such as the ‘Bismark’ and ‘Scharnhorst’.

The room was dominated by a huge radiogram, a piece of furniture that combined a radio and record player, close to my grandfather’s armchair.  To the right of his chair fitted shelves housed a large collection of 78rpm records in paper sleeves and “albums” containing collections of multiple disc records of related material such as classical works and recordings of famous speeches.  There were a great many old and dull books on shelves in the alcove, and a 24-volume set of Encyclopaedia Britannica dating from the late 1920s.  Hanging high up on the wall was a glass fronted cabinet displaying my grandfather’s ceremonial dress sword and dirk (dagger) each with its scabbard, gold bullion epaulettes, and other artefacts including his telescope, sextant, and naval service medals. 

Leaving that room and heading to the left across the hallway there was a door opening into a windowless corridor leading to what would have been the original cottage.  At the end, on the left was a rustic ledged-and-braced cottage door with a thumb latch opening to my great grandmother’s sitting room, and opposite was a similar door into the main kitchen of the house, which then opened out into the alleyway.

My great grandmother’s sitting room was the brightest room on the ground floor, with a window to the side of the house looking across a path to the garage, and a window to the back which looked out onto a small garden mostly laid to lawn.  Strangely, the surface of the garden was much higher than the floor inside the house, so was about level with the bottom of the window sill.  My great grandmother had two armchairs each side of an open fireplace, a dining table with four chairs, another radiogram tuned to the BBC Home Service, and an early 1950s black and white television set which I don’t remember ever being switched on when she was alive. 

The kitchen was a similar sized room with a flagstone floor which kept it cool all year round, a built-in Victorian dresser along one wall, a deep butler sink with only a cold tap, and a door into an old pantry housing a 1940s electric refrigerator.  There were no modern kitchen units, just an old farmhouse-style pine table which was used for food preparation.  Unusually, there were two gas cookers side-by-side: the one on the left was a green enamel stove from the 1920s used for cooking food for the many animals that were catered for in and around the house, and the one on the right was a cream model from the 1950s used for food for humans.  There were always a couple of sheets of newspaper on the floor with saucers of milk, tinned meat and fish intended for the several cats that lived in the house, but the half-eaten food and curdling milk were also a magnet for flies.

The back door of the kitchen gave access to side alley, known as ‘Bomb Alley ’, since an incident with an unexploded bomb landing there during the war.  The photograph below shows Barrow Camp’s Heavy Anti-Aircraft Battery on the left, my grandparent’s house in the centre top of the image, and bomb craters in the fields to the lower right.

Bomb Alley enclosed an outside toilet, coal store, meat safe, and hand operated wringer used for squeezing water out of wet laundry.  I absolutely hated the outside toilet: it was cold, damp, and very dark as there was no electric lighting, plus it was home to many huge spiders.  During daytime, the only light came in over or under the short door, but at night it was pitch black and unusable, so chamber pots were thoughtfully provided in the bedrooms for nighttime use.  The toilet paper ‘Izal Medicated’ on a roll, was popular at the time as it was resistant to damp so suitable for outside ‘facilities’, but particularly horrible as it resembled greaseproof paper, being shiny on one side or abrasive on the other and, as it was laced with germicide, it smelt of disinfectant.  I remember trying to soften the paper by crumpling it up first, but that didn’t improve it much. 

The meat safe was a wooden cupboard with doors and sides of galvanised wire mesh featuring tiny holes allowing air to circulate while keeping insects and mice out, commonly used before refrigeration was available but now used to store food destined for the animals.   The wringer was used all year round and if the clothes and sheets were folded carefully enough before putting them through the mangle’s rollers, this could save having to iron them once dry.  At the far end of the alley, stores of coal and wood were kept to burn in open fires during the winter, a very messy, labour intensive and inefficient way of heating.  Nevertheless, I still adore an open fire as the flames are enthralling to look at and it’s great fun to add fuel to the blaze then nudge the burning material with a poker for the best effect.  

Going back through the kitchen, along the dark corridor and back into the dingy lobby where some stairs led up to a tiny landing before they turned 180 degrees to go up to the next floor.  Off this landing was the bathroom which had been built out of the side of the house over Bomb Alley across to the boundary wall above the coal store.  By contrast this room was light and airy with small windows set high in the two side walls and a wide frosted casement window facing north towards the army camp.  The bathroom was the coldest place you can imagine in winter as it faced north, was built of wood with three outside walls and a roof above, with nothing above nor below to offer any insulation.  This bleak space was separated from the rest of the house by floor-to-ceiling frosted glass panels and a frosted glass door set in a timber frame.  The bath itself was filled from a narrow gas-fired container called a geyser fixed to the wall above that poured heated water directly into the bath through a thin chrome pipe,. This process took so long that the bath water was, at best, tepid during the summer months, so was occasionally used for bathing children, but I don’t believe it was ever used by adults.

Heading up the staircase to the first-floor landing where stairs continued up to the second floor were two doors, one was to the largest bedroom situated over my grandparents sitting room, and the other to a dark corridor off which was a tiny bedroom over the ground floor lobby and, at the end of the corridor, another two small bedrooms in the old cottage over my great grandmother’s sitting room and the main kitchen.  

The top floor had once been used as a children’s nursery, so there was a wooden stair gate at the top leading to a landing which was piled high with hundreds of ancient books, including a few for children.  There were two panelled doors, one leading to a bedroom of identical size and aspect as the large bedroom beneath it, but this room had wonderful uninterrupted sea views towards Portland Harbour and the Isle of Portland beyond.  The other door opened into a bedroom with a window overlooking the army camp, and a further door with a couple of steps down led into a tiny bedroom with only room for a narrow bed and a single wardrobe which had been ingeniously modified by sawing off the lower part of one side at an angle so it could sit over a brick chimney chase that ran up through the middle of the house.  Beyond that room was another door to a walk-in loft, but I don’t remember much about what was stored therein.

Throughout my childhood, the Westhill Cottage domestic arrangements were unusual, with the family structure dominated by my great grandmother who was the absolute matriarch and known to us as Gran.  My grandmother had always lived with her own parents, even after marrying my much older grandfather, whom she had met when he was a guest at the family’s hotel.  After my grandfather died in 1962, my grandmother began to take over the role of matriarch and wanted my brother and I to call her ‘Auntie’.  

Both women were great animal lovers and during my childhood kept several pets, including a viscous red macaw named ‘Polly’ who lived in a small cage next to Gran’s chair, ‘Ming’ a giant Pekingese dog which suffered terribly from anal gland abscesses which must have been extremely painful for the poor creature, and a constant turnover of rescued cats with numerous problems.  My grandmother also fed a of colony of feral cats on a nearby farm.  We children were even offered a bounty of sixpence for every flea-ridden and diseased young cat we could catch to be sent off the vet for neutering and, hopefully, rehoming.  Looking back, many of them were in such a pitiful state that it is likely they were immediately put down by the vet.

Gran died in the autumn of 1969 when she was 86 and, for the first time in her life, my grandmother was living alone.  It must have been quite challenging for her, as she no longer had anyone to take care of but herself.  Sadly, she developed a mouth cancer which left her unable to eat, and she became so emaciated and weak that she was admitted to a nursing home where she died in 1974 aged 69.

My final memory of the house is when I accompanied my dad to collect some belongings before the property was sold and the contents disposed of.  It was unsettling to return when so many familiar items had already gone and I was disconcerted to see key telephone numbers written on the hallway wall – something that would never have been allowed before.

We packed several boxes with pictures, crockery, glassware, and other items all wrapped in towels and bed linen to protect them before loading the boxes into the back of a hired van.  Since no one else was interested in them, my dad decided to bring back some albums of 78rpm gramophone records, hoping to sell them and offset the cost of the van.  To prevent them from being damaged during the long four-and-a-half-hour journey to London, I held them on my lap the entire way.

When we reached our home in Fulham, my dad began to unload the van.  I could not be trusted to carry the records into the house, so he took them off me and carried them into the house himself.  Unfortunately, he tripped on the front step, causing the records to slip from his grasp and crash onto the hallway floor, shattering several of the delicate shellac discs and rendering them completely worthless.

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