Now! Then! 2024! - Yorkshire On This Day

Excerpt

The house was handsomely austere and, in those happy days of fuel-plenty, could be kept warm even through the two months of snow and fog which were the prelude to 1913. But the demon of cold was biding his time and, when the 1914 War clamped down on England, seized his opportunity. Forty-one Headingley Lane could be as cold a house as any I have known. The main door, under a bleak pillared porch, gave on to a large vestibule. To the left of this was a full-size billiard room, used by my father as a picture-store. Its ornate cornice and hideous coloured glass served to emphasise the damp-stains from faulty lead-work, while its several old-fashioned radiators barely held their own against the chills creeping upward from the harsh dark soil. Beyond the vestibule lay the main hall, paved with marble slabs, open from floor to roof, and a playground for the four winds. So long as the elderly furnace, two or three anthracite stoves and all the sitting-room fires could be stoked to capacity, the hall was warm. But when restriction of supplies joined hands with patriotic self-denial, the lofty two-floor space became a core of bitter cold, against which no huddling over a study grate could other than temporarily contend. There is no doubt that the war-years spent in this fine house, designed for easy living and totally unsuited to a period of crisis, shortened my mother’s life. Circumstances demanded fewer and smaller fires, which her instinct for self-denial made fewer and smaller still. She lived in a muffle of woollies and scarves and coats, yet was never warm. Nobody’s fault and nothing to be done: but a sad pity, all the same.

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To facilitate reading, the spelling and punctuation of elderly excerpts have generally been modernised, and distracting excision scars concealed. My selections, translations, and editions are copyright.

Abbreviations:

• ER: East Riding
• GM: Greater Manchester
• NR: North Riding
• NY: North Yorkshire
• SY: South Yorkshire
• WR: West Riding
• WY: West Yorkshire

Comment

Comment

Curious – 78 isn’t bad! She was an heiress who left £88,000 on her death (£4.75M in October 2022), so the 1910s shortage of domestic servants (to make and clean fires) probably wasn’t a factor.

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Original

The house was handsomely austere and, in those happy days of fuel-plenty, could be kept warm even through the two months of snow and fog which were the prelude to 1913. But the demon of cold was biding his time and, when the 1914 War clamped down on England, seized his opportunity. Forty-one Headingley Lane could be as cold a house as any I have known. The main door, under a bleak pillared porch, gave on to a large vestibule. To the left of this was a full-size billiard room, used by MES as a picture-store. Its ornate cornice and hideous coloured glass served to emphasise the damp-stains from faulty lead-work, while its several old-fashioned radiators barely held their own against the chills creeping upward from the harsh dark soil. Beyond the vestibule lay the main hall, paved with marble slabs, open from floor to roof, and a playground for the four winds. So long as the elderly furnace, two or three anthracite stoves and all the sitting-room fires could be stoked to capacity, the hall was warm. But when restriction of supplies joined hands with patriotic self-denial, the lofty two-floor space became a core of bitter cold, against which no huddling over a study grate could other than temporarily contend. There is no doubt that the war-years spent in this fine house, designed for easy living and totally unsuited to a period of crisis, shortened my mother’s life. Circumstances demanded fewer and smaller fires, which her instinct for self-denial made fewer and smaller still. She lived in a muffle of woollies and scarves and coats, yet was never warm. Nobody’s fault and nothing to be done: but a sad pity, all the same.

286 words.

Tags

Tags are assigned inclusively on the basis of an entry’s original text and any comment. You may find this confusing if you only read an entry excerpt.

• 📌Buckingham House, 41 Headingley Lane, Leeds (2) ·
• Central heating (1) ·
• Cold (1) ·
• Fireplace (2) ·
• Fuel poverty (3) ·
• 📌Headingley (14) ·
• 📌Leeds (235) ·
• Michael Sadleir (1) ·
• Michael Sadler (educationist) (4) ·
• World War I (1914-19) (21) ·

All tags.

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