Life at the Club

 

In 1930 Mr W G Cook took over as caretaker of the Club on his retirement from the Army and in November that year moved into the caretaker’s house with his wife and three children. His second daughter, Emily Cook, gives us an idea of what life was like then. After a life spent thus far (she was then 11) in various Army barracks, she felt that the village surroundings with the park and the lake seemed like paradise. However…

 

"Not so the cottage and amenities, very primitive to say the least. Oil lamps by the dozen, eight above the billiard table to start with. All had to be filled, wicks trimmed and the lamp glasses washed and polished every day, I should say about twenty in all. Another hardship was the lack of water indoors and a sink. The water had to be fetched from an outside pump and washing-up done in a bowl on the table.

 

There would be whist drives and dances in the large clubroom, games tournaments, darts matches, for all of which we were required to provide the refreshments. Imagine the New Year’s Eve Squire’s Dance being free food and one free drink per person; it attracted gate-crashers from miles around and the room would be packed solid. Therefore it meant keeping a steady flow of clean glasses and crockery. We had a kitchen range which would be covered with pots and kettles and each bowl of dirty water had to be taken outside and emptied on the garden. If it was cold and frosty the pump would freeze up and each venture out to refill buckets meant taking a kettle of boiling water to thaw the pump first. Then next time you needed refills the thing would be solid again despite copious lagging and wrapping up.

 

It was goodbye to creature comforts like a water closet and sink with taps. The lavatory was a wooden seat with large bucket beneath situated in a boarded-off corner of one of the sheds. Of course this was the norm out in the country at that time and I suppose a slight improvement on the two-seater thunderbox at Watlington [where she was born, in the house of her mother’s parents]. Should one be unwise enough to want to pay a visit after dark it meant putting on your overcoat, lighting the hurricane lamp and setting forth like Scott into the Antarctic. The real nightmare began when, once enthroned, there would be all sorts of squeaks and scuffles. Should the lamp shine into the corners there would be the horrible red eyes of rats, causing shrieks of terror and a very hasty end to operations and a withdrawal to safety.

 

The late 1930s saw the advent of the Elsan chemical closet, luxury indeed. Ours was installed in a small shed nearer to the house, which seems to have been an outside larder at some time. It had a concrete floor, a small window and not so much as a mousehole. So we set about making it clean; a fresh coat of whitewash on the walls, then came a washstand fitted with bowl, towel rails on the end and a drawer at the bottom for bits and bobs. A large mirror was hung above and a mat put on the floor. Another plus was a lock and key to ensure privacy, sadly lacking before. Of course it wasn’t big enough to take the bath, a six-foot long galvanised one which was hung on the wall outside when not in use.

 

Having a bath meant filling the copper in the wash-house then lighting the fire underneath and waiting for the water to heat. In the winter the bath would be carried in and placed in front of the kitchen range and in the summer you bathed in the wash-house. This was a less arduous task as it saved countless trips back and forth with a bucket. Then one would enjoy a lovely bath, ever mindful of of the fact that once dried and dressed the baling out operation would begin, thus putting paid to the soothing effect of the bath.

 

Somewhere around this time a small annexe to the billiard room had been built to provide a ladies’ cloakroom with flush toilet and a hand basin with cold tap, thus relieving us of the imposition of having the females who attended the dances using our bedrooms as cloakrooms. The men’s toilet facilities were also upgraded by half a notch”.

 

[The upgrading of the men’s lavatory at the Club involved a water closet and urinal in the space between the boiler room and the coke store. As this facility was accessible from the garden through the coke store, the men of the family could now enjoy the luxury at all times. The women, however, could only use the new ladies’ cloakroom during the day when the Club was closed.] Emily Cook continues:

 

"Somewhere along the way oil lamps had been scrapped in favour of gas, acetylene gas to be precise, made in an outhouse. A very large contraption was installed and into this troughs of carbide would be inserted. Each morning the troughs would be full of a greyish-white sludge which had to be emptied and the troughs refilled with fresh lumps of carbide, this gave off an extremely nasty smell.

 

The next step forward was electricity and the allowance was three lights and a power plug. As there were three rooms downstairs this meant we still needed candles upstairs so Father paid an electrician to put a plug in each bedroom to have bedside lamps. He also bought a Baby Belling cooker for use in the summer but the range was used in winter for warmth.

 

At some point we had also acquired a sink and indoor pump. The sink was about three inches deep and placed on two brick piers, and owing to its shallow nature water was continually slopping over, but on the plus side there was a waste pipe and drain outside. At the end of the War, using Italian prisoners of war to dig the trenches, water was laid on, with baths and flush toilets, to all the cottages in the village. All except for the Club and Rectory Cottage that is, although a tap was exchanged for the pump in the kitchen and, through the good offices of the plumber and in the teeth of opposition from the Clerk of the Works, a deeper sink replaced the shallow one. These last two premises did not get the benefit of indoor baths and flush toilets until the 1960s.”