3 comments

  1. Hello, we love looking at the old photos, especially our house and surrounding area, would it be possible to get copies of the photos of our house, (we would obviously pay for them) they will be invaluable in the restoration process, but would also provide a great visual talking point in our home.
    Look forward to hearing from you.
    Tracy Malster
    The Old School
    The Lane.

  2. Your mitchells house (actually two cottages knocked together on the inside) was where I lived from birth untill approx. 1959. The house was rented by my parents, first of all from the Smiths and afterwards the Mitchells who lived next door in Manor Farm. The cottages had no hot water, you boiled a kettle to wash and I can remember the tin bath in front of the fire.Toilet facilities there was an outside privy with a bucket toilet that had to be emptied into the garden. The garden of course after many years of this practice was very fertile and grew lovely veg and fruit. I can remember we had 2 apple trees, 5 plum trees a large veg garden and lawn.We also kept chickens for some time after the end of the war. It looked completely different from what it looks like now. The village pump was opposite the cottages on the grass area and I can remember it was still standing when I was a boy though no longer in use.
    The cottages after the Plough inn also had communal privy bucket toilets and had a communal water tap in the hedge by the path.
    It was a lovely place in which to grow up because all that was normal if you lived in the country, I can also remember the infants school in Toddington when I went at 5 years old still had bucket toilets across the playground.
    A different world to that that exists today, but in some ways far superior.

  3. Further to above they are no’s 1 and 2 Manor Farm cottages, so were used I would imagine as workers cottages, as they only had two rooms up and two down. They of course would have been part of the estate of Manor Farm so were sold by the Smith Family when the Mitchells purchased.

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