Visiting Before My Father Purchased It From Colonel Watney

A Memory of Ivy Hatch.

I remember visiting the house with my mother (Phyllis) and father (Thomas) before we moved in in 1948 when I was 6 years old. There was myself, my twin sisters, another sister who had just been born and my half brother Tom (Biff). In the first year there my brother Jonathan was born. During the time there, my sisters and I went to school in the summer house on the summer house lawn for only an hour or two a day. We had our own live in school master. I used to get up at 5 am and with my half brother Tom we used to milk the cows in the cowshed at the far end of the pond. I used to do most of it while Tom used to draw aeroplanes on the cow shed walls. After, we would have water fights with the hoses that we used to wash the cow shed floor with. Dad used to give the cows Guinness to improve the cream content of the milk which was the highest in Kent. I used to churn the butter. Dad used to smoke and cure our own bacon. We had 52 acres to run around in when we were not at lessons, with cows, horses, pigs, chickens, ducks, a nut orchard, walled kitchen garden and fantastic trees. Up in the Coach House, which was a garage and stables then, Dad had a yellow Rolls Royce. There was a fire and the car was destroyed. I have many other memories up until 1952 when my father went bankrupt and the property was split up into many lots and sold at auction and we moved to Croydon to live in one room in my auntie Doris's house.