Life in Wellingborough After The War

My family moved to 121 Midland Road during the winter of 1946 as my father worked in a local paint factory till 1948. There was a huge monkey puzzle tree in the front garden. I was 7 and my sister was 10. We loved that house. We used to belong to the Boots Booklovers library in the town and were allowed to go and change our books on our own. I remember going to the Wellingborough Zoo for special occasions and can still see the polar bear walking to and fro along his cage. We used to collect conkers from the park near our house and give them to our dad for his work, as they needed them to extract the oil for their paint. Our milk was delivered on a horse and cart and poured into jugs at the front door. We kept it in the pantry during the winter and scalded it in the summer, which gave a thick creamy crust for our cornflakes. We had brought a lot of bottled fruit, vegetables jams and pickles with us from our home in Lancashire as well as eggs preserved in isinglass from our hens. Bread, meat and fish were delivered to the door in those days. Our neighbours kept a pig in the back garden near their tennis court, and we used to scratch its back and talk to it with my friend Angela who lived there. Then one day the pig disappeared and the kitchen was full of pork joints! We even tasted some of the bacon - a treat during a time of severe rationing. My sister and I used to travel to school on the bus to the Convent School in Kettering every day and we sat upstairs on one of the long bench seats after climbing the steep step from the passageway. That winter was the heaviest snowfall in recent memory and the snow was piled along the road for many weeks. We used to go sledging in the park but it was too cold to stay for long. Our house was kept warm by a coal fire and an Aladdin heater in the hallway. There was an old stove in the kitchen and there were gas heaters above the sink and the bath to heat the water. Coal was scarce, but we managed somehow. We used to walk everywhere or go by bus in those days and occasionally we went on the train to see my grandparents in London.