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General => The Common Room => The Lighter Side => Topic started by: Erato on Tuesday 23 February 21 21:47 GMT (UK)

Title: Historic dwelling
Post by: Erato on Tuesday 23 February 21 21:47 GMT (UK)
I had to laugh.  My childhood home has been classified as a 'historic' residence.  Here's how it was when I lived there in about 1950.  That's my mother telling me to hurry up.

http://records.lexingtonma.gov/weblink/0/doc/354822/Page1.aspx
Title: Re: Historic dwelling
Post by: Mike in Cumbria on Tuesday 23 February 21 22:26 GMT (UK)
Here's me outside my first home - not so posh as yours.

We lived in this for four years, I have good memories of heading straight out into the adjoining forest to collect bedding for our pet rabbit. After that it was a house, not half so much fun.
Title: Re: Historic dwelling
Post by: Treetotal on Tuesday 23 February 21 22:38 GMT (UK)
I love both these, our Family home is now and industrial estate sadly. Thanks for sharing Erato and Mike.
Erato, that looks a lovely place to live with plenty of open space to enjoy the outdoors.
Mike, what a great way start to your early years in outdoors too. It could do with a bit of a freshen up so get working on it, or, put up for us to give it a refurb  ;)
Carol
Title: Re: Historic dwelling
Post by: Erato on Tuesday 23 February 21 22:50 GMT (UK)
We were only a block from the Great Meadow.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arlington%27s_Great_Meadows
Title: Re: Historic dwelling
Post by: Treetotal on Tuesday 23 February 21 22:57 GMT (UK)
Wow....the wild life sounds amazing, glad the land isn't suitable for building on, the trend these days is to build on every available green belt  :-\   No wonder we have so many flooded areas these days, the UK is sinking under the weight of concrete  :-\
Carol
Title: Re: Historic dwelling
Post by: Top-of-the-hill on Tuesday 23 February 21 22:59 GMT (UK)
   My house, built 1900. Either my mother or her older sister in this picture.
Title: Re: Historic dwelling
Post by: Treetotal on Tuesday 23 February 21 23:09 GMT (UK)
Have any of you been back to see where you grew up? I have, but only if we want to change the car or get caravan accessories  ;D
Carol
Title: Re: Historic dwelling
Post by: Erato on Tuesday 23 February 21 23:33 GMT (UK)
My first home in Beloit, Wisconsin - a tar paper shack for veterans returning to college after WWII.
Title: Re: Historic dwelling
Post by: Mike in Cumbria on Wednesday 24 February 21 08:07 GMT (UK)
We were only a block from the Great Meadow.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arlington%27s_Great_Meadows

Looks amazing - and probably quite influencing for your future life.
Title: Re: Historic dwelling
Post by: Top-of-the-hill on Wednesday 24 February 21 10:01 GMT (UK)
  I occasionally drive past my old house, but I prefer not to look at it, as it is no longer white but a horrible sludgy brown. I presume it is to do with maintenance, but am surprised that it has been allowed. Kent weatherboard should be white!
Title: Re: Historic dwelling
Post by: Gillg on Wednesday 24 February 21 10:33 GMT (UK)
I went back to the house I grew up in 30 years after leaving it.  I don't recommend it.  The house was run down with ramshackle buildings attached to it and really looked as though no one cared.  But the houses all around were dilapidated, too,  and the town itself looked dirty and neglected.  Maybe we see things from our youth with rose-coloured spectacles, but I really wouldn't advise a return visit unless you are prepared to be disappointed.
Title: Re: Historic dwelling
Post by: Top-of-the-hill on Wednesday 24 February 21 10:43 GMT (UK)
  I quite agree; it is rather the opposite for me as country villages have gone up-market rather than down, but there is nothing much to recognise. Not really surprising after 50 years, and anyone coming back to the village I live in now would have similar feelings!
Title: Re: Historic dwelling
Post by: oldfashionedgirl on Wednesday 24 February 21 12:15 GMT (UK)
Whenever I go to visit my mum I see the house I was born in as it is opposite where she still lives. We moved to the other side of the road to a slightly bigger 1960 bungalow.
I can see the bedroom window where I was born and I often think it should have a blue plaque beside it  ;)
What irks me most is that the house that I live in now is 140 years old approx and I haven’t been able to find a single birth in it ! 3 deaths and a marriage so far but no babies and by the look of it there won’t be unless I miraculously discover some poor, heavily pregnant woman caught short when visiting  ;D
Title: Re: Historic dwelling
Post by: ThrelfallYorky on Wednesday 24 February 21 15:26 GMT (UK)
The farmhouse where I was born was tarted up regardless a couple of decades ago, think it's got everything - probably jacuzzi, swimming pool, wine cellar,  everything. It has got electrical security gates to the road to it. When we were there it had a shippon, barns, dairy, muck heap, etc.....
How times change!
Title: Re: Historic dwelling
Post by: Erato on Wednesday 24 February 21 15:43 GMT (UK)
I passed by with my Dad about ten years ago.  That house seemed so small and a later occupant had enclosed the front porch and made it into a sun room.  The street was paved!  The pear tree was gone and so was the neighbor's mulberry. The empty lot across the street was no longer empty.  There had been a giant glacial erratic boulder there which my father must have been sitting on when he took that picture.  The meadow was much improved by sixty years of mostly undisturbed regrowth.  It was just empty land when I lived there, not a popular recreation spot.  We used to prowl around out there for tadpoles and such in the summer and ice skate on the little ponds in the winter.
Title: Re: Historic dwelling
Post by: Treetotal on Wednesday 24 February 21 16:16 GMT (UK)
It good to hear that so many Family homes have survived. I know many will have changed beyond recognition and I suppose that destroys some of the memories. In later life, everything looks so much smaller than how you remember it growing up.
Carol