Well, I have been back before as I said, but this time I looked at the road with a more critical eye, and my goodness, they have crammed in the houses. Of course, having Broad frontage and a proper quay heading, right opposite the park, it's valuable real estate - but almost all the houses in the road now have another crammed in their garden, but as the building line is way back from the Broad, they must all have really long, narrow gardens.
Anyway, this is the view of the house from the park opposite.
And with the house itself picked out.
You can see how the house was divided in two because the original slate roof has been replaced with tiles on the right-hand side. That was done last year - the Sage happened to call on a friend in the road and saw the builders and he brought a slate back for me, very thoughtfully. I rather loved that roof but I can quite see why the present owners had to choose a different material. They were Welsh slates, they'd cost a fortune now, even supposing they were available.
We drove round to Broad View Road. On the way, I took a snap of Caldecott Road, where Simon and Huck used to chase the cars. It's a long road - I said half a mile and I wasn't exaggerating.
Here is the house, the two halves, from the road side. Not very attractive at all, the front was the river side and that is the nicer view of it.
The wall and railings weren't there in our day, there was a chain-link fence and a shrubbery and then a drive the length of the house. A garage has been added to each house and the original garage has been replaced by another house. Four houses have been built in the kitchen garden and to the left of our house and the gardener's cottage has been massively enlarged and two more houses built in the garden and paddock there. That's ten houses where there used to be two.
The original gardener's cottage, with the dormer windows added, is the pebbledashed part on the right.
Anyway, this is the view of the house from the park opposite.
We drove round to Broad View Road. On the way, I took a snap of Caldecott Road, where Simon and Huck used to chase the cars. It's a long road - I said half a mile and I wasn't exaggerating.
3 comments:
See, it's not always a good idea to go back. Better to keep your memories.
My mother was stunned when I found a current online photo of her childhood home. She remembered it being much larger and "look at that monstrosity they built where the garage used to be" was one comment made.
After my mother left, she never went down the road again. We have friends who lived in one of the kitchen garden houses and now live at the end of the road (which is a cul de sac) so we have, and I don't mind doing so. My memories are intact, I wouldn't want to live there now.
When we visited the house, I was surprised that the rooms were not larger, but then I'd lived in houses with very large rooms for the previous 25 (now 35+) years. The bits that I liked best were the ones that were just as I remembered them!
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