Upton House Family Visit

Saturday 16th July 2016 was a great family day out at Upton House.  There were 19 of us - all related in some way to my father Barney Adler - and we were looked after very well by the staff at Upton.  ,
Peter and I arrived first, quickly followed by Eliot, Nancy, Abe and Saul.  Sadly we had only time for a quick hug before we had to dash away and meet a couple who's grandfather had worked for the same bank as my father and who had also spent some of the war years at Upton House.  While we were talking to them in the restaurant, the rest of the family arrived and then we were treated to lunch, courtesy of the National Trust.   Then it was off to the house for free entry and the tour.

Upton House was transformed into the Country House Bank, recalling the years when the staff were moved out of the city of London to Upton to escape the bombing.  My father had written about his time there in his 'memoirs' and some of his stories had formed the basis for the exhibition.  Peter and I had heard the tour before when we went for the opening, but Barney's grandchildren and great-grandchildren were fascinated.   Ann Thomas, a volunteer with responsibility for oral history, was our guide and she had been my contact while the exhibition was taking shape, checking facts with me and asking for photographs.  The great-grandchildren ranged in age from 3 to 7 so there were some understandable moments of inattention!   Ann coped with noise, and questions and touching!

Barney and Joyce, my parents

This was my third visit to Upton House and I always come away feeling sad that my parents didn't live to see their own story captured in this way.

The family gathers for lunch

The start of the tour

In the 'banking hall'

My father's desk...

Boys reading

Supposedly, my father's bed

More introductions

The work continues

We are now in week 5 of the building works and although things are happening, it does seem to be taking a long time.    Achievements so far include:

• Repairing a lovely old brick and flint wall
• Removing and replacing raised beds - doing away with the crumbling bricks and replacing the sides with timber
• Removing more unloved plants and broken pots
• Laying new paving and brick edging for a shingled area 
• Making a new kitchen floor which is dampproof
• Dampproofing the walls in the kitchen and one of the sitting room walls
• Taking up floor boards here, there and everywhere and discovering rotten joists, woodworm and death watch beetle to name but a few! 
• Making safe the old electrical system and getting ready for the electrics for the new kitchen
• Moving lights to more suitable places
• Measuring up the new kitchen cabinets
• Replacing worn bricks in the outside wall

Well, when it's all listed they do seem to have done quite a bit, but the house is in turmoil with all our belongings being shifted from one side of the living room to another, beds being up-ended and bedding stuffed into cupboards and tools everywhere.  We want our house back!   And clean!

We are also anxious to get on with some of the work we want to do ourselves, but we're having to be patient. 

Only one things has gone slightly wrong and it's being put right this week, we hope.   The raised beds were filled with top soil which had no organic matter in it.  None of the builders seemed to understand the need for compost/soil improver in the mix, although the landscaper where they bought the soil could have told them.   It seems we were all new to the requirements for raised beds and I hadn't thought to check as the company is very well known and of long standing.   I assumed they had done this before.   They are the Queen's builders for heaven's sake!

Moaning over!  On the plus side, all the builders are extremely pleasant and careful.   I've started taking a cake down when we make our weekly visit, to keep them sweet! 

Conference in the kitchen

The garden taking shape

The new kitchen sub floor

The central raised bed.

The builders are in!

 The builders started on 13th June 2016.   In the garden is Dan, a gentle giant, and a helper or two and in the house is Adam, sharing the two helpers.  The plumber and the electrician have also dropped in to help sever the services to the kitchen.

The kitchen wall

It turns out that the previous builders did a pretty rough job on the house, which is what we always suspected on the evidence of misplaced window catches and poor quality tiles.  When the kitchen was pulled out we found it was suspended on a stud wall and some of the cupboards were held on to the plasterboard with clips and not fixed to wooden battens.  All the services had been routed on the outside of the wall.  At some point a sink fixing had been screwed through a junction box narrowly missing the live wires!  In other words a rough and ready job.

Kitchen floor - a horror story

 The tiles on the kitchen floor have been taken up to reveal, in archaelogical order,  a) rotten hardboard, b) original floorboards, c) concrete with d) rotten (damp) joists between.   The rotten wood is being scraped out so that the whole floor can be concreted and waterproofed.  Kerching!  (The sound of the cash register in action!)

Today work begins on looking under the hall carpet to see if the floor there is in a similar condition.  I suspect it is.

Three layers of flooring.

 Outside, the pots are neatly stacked in groups leaving space for various activities.  The raised beds with their crumbling brickwork and weeds and dead shrubs have been removed. 

Tidy workmen

Peter and Dan discuss the wall

Brick and flint wall after removal of ivy

The lovely old brick and flint wall had been badly damaged by ivy so the men have been carefully raking it out prior to repairing it.   The men are incredibly tidy.  Yesterday they were removing the kitchen floor and taking out the kitchen, today there no sign of either.

Valiant attempts were made to move two shrubs and two trees that we'd like to have kept but it looks as though they have been too shocked to survive.   Dan will keep an eye on them and remove them if necessary.   He's taken the huge compost bin for his father, which is another unwanted item out of the garden.

My poor trees!

Next week the sleepers arrive to create the new raised beds.  So, progress is being made and so are one or two uncomfortable discoveries!  

Our first family weekend: Easter 2016

For the first time, the Southwold house had all the bedrooms in operation!   I'd made some bedding purchases and we went down on the Wednesday before Easter in anticipation of the family arriving.  Eliot, Nancy and the boys arrived on Thursday afternoon and the boys were thrilled with the house.  They scampered everywhere exploring and particularly liked the three staircases and the possibility of going up the wrong staircase!   Rupert joined us on Friday and Simon and Tania arrived on Saturday and stayed until Monday.  Rupert was back to work on Tuesday and Eliot and Nancy also headed home.

We had a couple of good walks (one of which ended in a hail storm which saw us all arrive back frozen and damp).  The other walk included a ferry crossing to Walberswick and a pub lunch there.  We also ate out at the Sole Bay Fish Company on the harbour and and on Monday the boys treated us to champagne and lunch at the Butley Orford Oystery in honour of my birthday.  After lunch we went to look at Orford Castle.  It was so windy that Saul was blown over on the edge of the moat,  but fortunately did not tumble too far.  We also ate at home and took turns with the cooking. 

Despite the fact that the weather was mixed, the small boys managed to play on the beach at least three times with the bucket and spades that we found in the garden.   We even took down the body board  which was another garden find and Abe and Saul got into their wet suits and made a very brief attempt at surfing!   Well, it was very cold and I thought they were brave even to dip in their toes!  I was pleased to be wearing a windproof coat and warm hat!

Rupert was chief fireman and made some purchases of logs and coal and we had some roaring fires.  All in all we could see how well the house accommodated the whole family and our purchase got the thumbs up from everyone. 

At the harbour

On the ferry

On the ferry to Walberswick

Peter

Cosy!

Early morning lego session

The Liss Brothers

Two boys pretending to be babies!

Orford Castle...orfly windy!

Tarzan Saul

Cool Abe

Abe strides out confidently

Brave Dad!

Abe and Saul testing the water

Abe on his way back in a hurry!

Warming up with Mum

Progress in the garden and a nasty surprise in the kitchen!

Got back last night from three busy days at Southwold.  We arrived in the afternoon and after consulting the amazingly complicated refuse collection rota, confirmed it was the night to put out the blue bin (recycling) and the green bin (garden waste).    In the middle of the night I realised (why does my brain process nonsense all night?) that I hadn't put the sticker on the green bin that confirms we have paid for the garden waste collection service.   Absense of the sticker would result in the bin not being emptied and we are desperate to move some of the garden debris so I tossed and turned, worrying about it.   In the end I got up at 4.0 am (4.00 am!!) and put on my dressing gown and slippers and went out into the street to put the sticker on the bin!   Fortunately the street is well lit and there was no one about to see the mad lady!  At least I don't think there was...

Suspicious goings on

The following morning we got up reasonably early and Peter went off to the Two Magpies bakery and came back with sourdough bread and two large croissants.   I devoured the croissants and Peter sawed and chomped his way through several slices of sourdough.  Both equally delicious.   Then we pottered about doing jobs until the builder came to look at the house and give an opinion on what needs to be done following the survey.   He was with us for 3 hours!   A thorough walk around outside and through the house, a bit of a discussion and then a tour on his own with note pad in hand.   We should get an estimate next week.   Interestingly he dismissed as not necessary quite a lot of the precautionary work recommended in the survey report - on the premise that if it ain't broke don't fix it.  This was heartening, but he thought we ought to look at the reason why some of the kitchen tiles have sunk (not mentioned in the survey!) and took up a couple.  Well!  He then took up some more and confirmed that the tiles had been laid on hardboard which in turn was laid on old joists infilled with concrete. And the hardboard is rotten and in some places damp.   If it turns out that the concrete was put onto soil without a proper membrane, then damp is rising from the ground and we'll have to have the whole kitchen floor dug out and remade and all the kitchen will have to come out too...£££££££££££  The good thing is that the builder is the director of a very good Norfolk firm and we like him. They've done a small job for us in Norwich and we know they do a good work.

While the builder was doing his stuff Mattressman arrived to deliver a mattress and king size bed frame for the attic room.  Two youngish men willingly carried all the parts up two flights of stairs to the attic.  That was the good part.  Unfortunately they managed to crack a bannister rod and knock off some paint here and there.  More repairs!

In the afternoon Peter and I loaded the car up with green bags full of garden waste (the green bin was full again) and headed for the 'household recycling centre' in Lowestoft, stopping on the way back at Homebase to check out kitchens (all really nasty) and lavatory seats!  Back at Southwold we began the process of putting the bed together.  No easy task, crawling about on hands and knees and trying to do up nuts and bolts in impossibly small spaces.   We got the main frame together and then decided we needed a break.   We went across to the Little Fish and Chip Shop opposite and had very good cod and chips.  We sat in the shop, they have two tables, and watched the local citizens coming and going.

The following day we completed the bed and then unwrapped the mattress and discovered that we don't have duvet for the bed.  Another purchase to be made this weekend.  Peter made another trip to the dump at Lowestoft with all the broken pots and sundry rubbish from the garden and I laboured clearing weeds from the paving, pruning, weeding and moving pots and shovelling excess earth. It's difficult to know how so much spare soil has accumulated.  We are beginning to knock the garden into shape.

And so, back to Norwich.  Two steps forward and one step back!

Another onslaught on the garden...

Back from two days in Paris (too blasé to take photographs) where we had two excellent meals and visited two museums as well as getting in a day's work (Peter) and a day at my old club catching up with friends (me).   A day in Norwich catching up on laundry - amazing what a tyranny that is.  When is someone going to invent a machine that knows when the laundry basket is full and washes, irons and folds - and a very enjoyable evening out with one of Peter's PhD student from years ago and his lovely family.  

Then off to Southwold.  On Saturday afternoon we did some odd jobs around the house, gluing together a table that had become wonky, fixing lights up and positioning them round the house, organising bedding and generally planning our renovation campaign.   Since we won't pick up a paint brush until the builders have done their stuff we are turning our energies on the overgrown garden.

The fruits of Rupert's labours

The reject pile

Rupert had done an excellent job when he stayed there last week cutting down trees/bushes and bagging them up.

On Sunday morning the sun shone now and then and the temperature went up and Peter and I got stuck in.   I uprooted various plants that had become too woody or were in the wrong place, dug around pulling out root systems and sending soil back on the bed where it belonged, cleared out more pots, weeded, cut suckers off the bay tree etc. etc.  It was hard work!  Peter attacked the pile of wood that Rupert had left and sawed it up into kindling and helped me with the heavy lifting.

Sawing up kindling

Gradually we are making piles of stuff that needs to be thrown out and piles of pots etc that can be kept.

The keep pile

Mrs W had a penchant for putting things in pots or dustbins.  Fortunately we found that the root systems hadn't escaped through the bottoms of the pots so we can move these about for incorporation later into flower beds.

Looking for a new location...

Unfortunately the walls of the raised beds are in a poor state as trees planted too close to the edges have expanded their root systems.  As we clear and look round we're trying to imagine what to do with various spaces in the garden.   A garden shed is definitely on the list as the present system of sticking everything in a corner and covering it with a prehistoric piece of hardboard doesn't do much for the quality of tools!

The glory hole!

Something to keep...

And I'd like a herb garden.  Lots of ideas whirling round!   After all that hard work it was time to go in and refuel!

I know, not exactly healthy eating, but much needed!

A 70th Wedding Anniversary Celebration

No!  Not ours, but my Aunt and Uncle's.  Here's the happy couple in 1946.  I was actually at the wedding (oops, given the game away there!) but not in this particular group photo.

The wedding group (my grandparents at the back on the right

Vera and Peter

My cousin Di put together a team of great friends who made a superb meal and the celebration was held in a friend's barn.   My Uncle isn't too well, but he managed to enjoy himself I hope.  My Aunt is in great form (they're both 94 years old) and was going from table to table checking up on people and  made a short speech! 

We caught up with old friends of my cousin's, made plans for a family get together and then drove back to Southwold.   The following day it was back to the grindstone!  Rupert arrived with his power screwdriver and put up a bed, then he got out the chain saw and started on the old falling down trees in the garden!   As my Uncle remarked yesterday, "Using a chain saw is fun, but you have to clear it all up afterwards!" Indeed! 

Peter and my sister in law Angela

John Pinch - designer and craftsman (lovely jewelry on his websie)

Angela's partner Mike - very GSOH

Aunty doing the rounds

She couldn't come in person but she sent a card!!

Vera and Peter

Cutting the cake - wonderful son in law on Aunty's right!

Having the last word!