By Robin Greaves

I first visited Yealand Conyers as a small child in the early thirties, and spent holidays here every year till 1939 when we stayed on because of the war. I lived in Manchester on a main tram route, so that Yealand was a very different place from my home and made a great impression on me.

We stayed at what is now Friends Cottage. There was no water laid on, no electricity, and the road was not yet made up. Washing water came from a big rainwater tank by the side of the cottage, and drinking water from the pump up on the road. We would take big enamel jugs and, after an adult had primed the pump, my sister and I would take turns to work the handle. The water was very cold and tasted much better, we thought, than the water out of a tap in Manchester. The water jugs were kept on the floor in the larder, with net covers edged with blue glass beads.

Having a bath by the kitchen fire was much more fun than using our bathroom at home. First of all an old rag rug was placed on the hearth-rug. Then the bath was brought in from the outhouse. At first this was an oval tin bath, replaced as we got bigger by the hip bath; Hot water came from the tank in the kitchen range, cold water in buckets. To sit in a bath by the fire was a real treat and we were sorry when mains water eventually came to the village (1937, was it? ) and a bath was installed in the cold outhouse.

The lavatory was outside, in early years a chemical closet and then, when a rainwater tank was put on the roof, a flush toilet. I can still remember the fear of going out into the dark at night and the welcome warmth of the paraffin stove in there, which made patterns on the ceiling.

Oil lamps and candles provided our lighting. When dusk came there was quite a ceremony of lighting the oil lamp, and I remember the warmth and smell it gave out, as well as the light from the lovely globe.

The centre of village life was the village shop, where you not only did your shopping, but met people and heard the news as well. You pushed the door open and the bell attached to the back of the door rang loudly. I remember the oilcloth covered counter as being higher than my nose. The bacon-slicer was at one end, and a large block of yeast wrapped in muslin at the other. Behind the counter were large jars of sweets, and I remember especially the red and yellow sugar sticks. The shop carried on even long enough to see decimal coinage come in, in 1970, but closed the next year. The shop building is still there, but now it only sells ‘antiques’. [Ed this has now closed and is a private residence]

When we needed milk, my sister and I were sent down to Dyke House Farm, each swinging a can in one hand. It seemed a long way to the farm, and being town children, we were rather frightened of the cows. We would knock on the door of the dairy, have our cans filled and then carefully trudge back up the hill to the cottage.

Although we came to Yealand by car I can’t remember any traffic on the road, except for farm carts and the mole catcher’s pony and trap. I can’t remember when the road was surfaced with tarmac, but I still have a scar on my knee from, falling on the newly tarred and gravelled road.

Naturally, as children, we were not aware that we were seeing the end of village life as it had been for hundreds of years, and it was only recently that I realised that my early memories of Yealand were history.

Published in Mourholme Magazines Issue 14 1990