Keeping the council’s lampshades

I was born and bought up in Charlton Road and my God mother’s mom and dad (Cashmore’s) were the first people to move into the council house opposite my childhood home when it was first built. Because it was a council house and didn’t belong to them, they insisted on keeping the ‘council’s’ lamp shades in a cupboard, so they could be reinstated if they had to move. They also kept the cupboard in the alcove in the front room in place (Many people won’t realise that many of the houses on the estate had these when they were first built). It is really sad that the family continued to pay the council rent up until my God mother passed away about 5 years ago. The amount of rent they paid since the 1930’s would have meant they could have owned the house many times over. When my God mother died the cupboard in the front room had already been removed. However the house still had an outside toilet, the bathroom was still accessed straight from the kitchen, there was still a pantry in the kitchen with a cold slab and the upstairs bedroom doors and frames were still painted in the councils original brown paint. It’s a shame the house has since been modernised. As it had changed very little since it was built it could have been used as a museum like the ‘Back to Back Houses’- a missed opportunity to teach our children how people used to live. I have such happy memories of visiting the house and occasionally I look at the photos that were left to me of my God mother, her mom and dad and their house in Charlton Road.