Littlehay Road cottages
“Well, there’s the lettuce,” my mother said, handing over a crisp, fresh head of green, with soil still attached. “But I can’t tell you anything else.”
We’d moved to the cottages near the Oxford Road end of Littlehay Road a few days earlier. My mother had come down from the North for a few days to help with the unpacking.
It was our first house purchase and for the first time since moving to Oxford, we had a garden. It was an interesting shape; the additional L-shaped area at the bottom had apparently included an orchard and had possibly been part of a Cowley farrier or blacksmith’s yard in previous centuries. Now ringed by houses, we were able to rent it at a princely sum of £5.00 a year in the 1970s.
My mother had been investigating the garden when our next-door neighbour, an elderly gentleman with full Oxford blood, called to her over the fence. He held a long conversation while my mother nodded dutifully, accepting the proffered lettuce and returning indoors. She stifled the giggles as she handed it over, explaining that she had not understood a single word he had said. She’d simply never met someone with a strong local Oxford accent before and was totally flummoxed (and it was really strong!)
Luckily, our understanding of Mr Cullen’s accent grew and we quickly valued his local knowledge and stories of the area. He and his father had been general labourers and had helped build the cottages. He described many dubious building practices as we began to create our own home. The previous owners had lovingly kept the house and garden but in the general Do It Yourself craziness of the early ‘70s, we started to change the rooms as and when we could afford it. The kitchen wall acquired a “hatch” and as we pickaxed our way through the old-style breeze-blocks, Mr Cullen gleefully told us how the blocks were formed from rubble from the smithy, concrete dust, soil and the all-important liquid factor – the builders’ own urine! We tried not to breathe in too much dust after that information!
After the water-tank burst, we had to re-plaster the stairs, landing and hall, first removing what remained of the wooden laths and crumbling old plaster. Mr Cullen stood leaning against the front door, picking out bits from the dusty plaster as we removed it. “It’s horse-hair,” he said. “We used to comb the tails of the horses while they were waiting for their new shoes. A couple went back to their owners with tails a foot or two shorter, as well!”
My mother never did master the Oxford accent. But we learned to love listening to Mr Cullen’s stories and sharing produce over the garden fence. We often returned from work to find a contribution for the food table parked carefully on our water-butt. He laughed heartily at our early attempts to grow veg in the old smithy, happily accepting our return gifts of the newly grown harvest. He always warned that our carrots would be “cross-legged” because of the smithy’s rubbish below the soil – and he was right.
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We’d moved to the cottages near the Oxford Road end of Littlehay Road a few days earlier. My mother had come down from the North for a few days to help with the unpacking.
It was our first house purchase and for the first time since moving to Oxford, we had a garden. It was an interesting shape; the additional L-shaped area at the bottom had apparently included an orchard and had possibly been part of a Cowley farrier or blacksmith’s yard in previous centuries. Now ringed by houses, we were able to rent it at a princely sum of £5.00 a year in the 1970s.
My mother had been investigating the garden when our next-door neighbour, an elderly gentleman with full Oxford blood, called to her over the fence. He held a long conversation while my mother nodded dutifully, accepting the proffered lettuce and returning indoors. She stifled the giggles as she handed it over, explaining that she had not understood a single word he had said. She’d simply never met someone with a strong local Oxford accent before and was totally flummoxed (and it was really strong!)
Luckily, our understanding of Mr Cullen’s accent grew and we quickly valued his local knowledge and stories of the area. He and his father had been general labourers and had helped build the cottages. He described many dubious building practices as we began to create our own home. The previous owners had lovingly kept the house and garden but in the general Do It Yourself craziness of the early ‘70s, we started to change the rooms as and when we could afford it. The kitchen wall acquired a “hatch” and as we pickaxed our way through the old-style breeze-blocks, Mr Cullen gleefully told us how the blocks were formed from rubble from the smithy, concrete dust, soil and the all-important liquid factor – the builders’ own urine! We tried not to breathe in too much dust after that information!
After the water-tank burst, we had to re-plaster the stairs, landing and hall, first removing what remained of the wooden laths and crumbling old plaster. Mr Cullen stood leaning against the front door, picking out bits from the dusty plaster as we removed it. “It’s horse-hair,” he said. “We used to comb the tails of the horses while they were waiting for their new shoes. A couple went back to their owners with tails a foot or two shorter, as well!”
My mother never did master the Oxford accent. But we learned to love listening to Mr Cullen’s stories and sharing produce over the garden fence. We often returned from work to find a contribution for the food table parked carefully on our water-butt. He laughed heartily at our early attempts to grow veg in the old smithy, happily accepting our return gifts of the newly grown harvest. He always warned that our carrots would be “cross-legged” because of the smithy’s rubbish below the soil – and he was right.
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