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On
a lovely sunny morning
in May we arrived at Brownhill House on The Brownhill, Ruyton XI Towns
and collected
the house key from the seller`s parents who lived in the house down the
lane.
I
have people staying for
B&B who literally take years to search for the right house in
Shropshire. Brownhill
House was the 4th
house we looked at. Roger`s
new job was
at RAPRA in Shawbury so we went to all the estate agents in Wellington
and
Shrewsbury and listed all the things we did and did not want – no new
houses,
old house any condition, with space round it.
Brownhill House had it all and we bought it for £4,650.
We
were now the proud
owners of a large ramshackle building with an old stone cottage
somewhere in
the middle. There
were two sitting
rooms, two large, and one small bedroom and an extension, comprising a
bedroom,
sitting room and kitchen, had been built on.
Along the back wall of the cottage was a large corrugated
iron WWI tin
shed which was the kitchen. At the end of this was a room with a bath
in it, the
waste from the bath and the kitchen sink found its way through plastic
pipes to
somewhere down the hill. There
was no
connection to the mains drains so the only lavatory was in a spanking
new brick
privy in the garden. We loved it all.
The first two jobs were to get connected to the drains and install a bathroom and the second job was to do something about the kitchen. There was a small Rayburn, on the outside wall with only a sheet of tin to keep the cold out, and the heat in, and if I put my twin tub on the opposite side of the room, it rolled down to meet the Rayburn. But first I had to get pregnant – perhaps the first night in our new home.
We
had the bathroom put
in by Bradleys of Baschurch, thanks to a grant, but it was the only one
we ever
applied for. Roger
jacked up the main
beam supporting the tin shed with two car jacks and put in footings, we
lifted
up floorboards and threw down buckets of hardcore until we could make a
yard of
concrete floor all round the kitchen.
We
could not have done it
without help from Richard, who we met when we lived in a caravan near
Wellington, and then Sue and Jim, two hippies who lived in a tent down
by the
river.
In
1986, with the help of
our friend Brian, we took the roof off the cottage at the centre of the
house,
built up the walls and put on a new roof.
Then in 1996, when we had a bit more money, the extension was built
above the granny flat,
but we did all the finishing.
We
could never have loved
a new house as we love this, the house we virtually built ourselves –
not to
mention the garden, which was so overgrown when we came here that we
could not
reach the river, until we had hacked a path down the hill.
Nearly
49 years later we
love not only our very special house but also the village which has
been so
good to us, never taking it for granted as perhaps those who are born
and bred
here might do.
I
hear stories of
young mums being lonely when they find themselves with a new baby with family and friends a
long way away. With
no car, I walked to the village shop
and chatted to everyone I saw. Before
Miranda was born I walked all the footpaths round the village marked on
the
Ordnance Survey map and later, walked for miles pushing the pram and
feeding my
baby behind hedges!
Roger
and I became
regulars at the Bridge Inn – my baby sitter for my Friday night out was
sacred. In those
days the pub was where
one went to meet local people, young and old and to learn about the
village where
we had to come to live.
Jean Rolfe who kept the shop in those days, introduced new people like me to other customers and it was she who suggested I join the WI. In no time at all I had friends throughout the village and through them, I acquired my interest in local history.
You
could say our family have been full circle as Hugo, born 3 years after
Miranda, has returned to live in Ruyton XI Towns with his
family.
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| The new privy built when the mains drains came to Ruyton! | All hands to build the new kitchen | Brian trusts his chainsaw weilding friend Roger |
