Childhood Memories - Trotter tree

The Cemetery Lodge was a very pleasant house. Set just inside the cemetery gates it comprised, kitchen, scullery, front room and council meeting room. There were three bedrooms upstairs and a bathroom. The central staircase was carpeted with a clippy runner, handmade by Nanna Ethel. The front room was full of fine furniture where no children were allowed. The scullery had a washing machine, primitive by today’s standards but Nanna insisted on using her tub and pos-stick, complete with dolly-blue. The kitchen was where family congregated. A coal fired range provided hot water and cooking facilities, even though a cooker was installed in the scullery. Batch baking of scones, bread etc were mixed in huge enamel basins on the kitchen table. The same kitchen table would be cleared and set for meal times and cleared again for other work. At Christmas time the whole family would gather around the table to make wreaths. Granddad took orders for Christmas wreaths and the kitchen became a hive of industry. Such occasions have become treasured visual and sensory memories of industrious family faces flushed with warmth from the fire, sitting around the kitchen table, jovial conversation, banter, the Christmassy aroma of wreath foliage and currant scones baking in the range oven, blackout blinds shutting out the night and the horsehair chaise-langue underneath the window on which, we children loved to sit.
As children we would sit in awe at the amazing wonders, happenings and grown up talk we shouldn’t have been privy to in this magical kitchen, this tree of knowledge. Cigarette stumps would be saved, unravelled and recycled to make new cigarettes from old, in a little roll up machine. How clever it was! Just by strategically placing tobacco and a paper in the machine, then closing the lid, a new cigarette would be manufactured! Too much or too little tobacco was not good enough and many a fat or pathetically thin cigarette made by little fingers was condemned and taken to pieces and reused again until the resulting ‘fag’ was acceptable. The chiming clock set on the sideboard was Granddad’s domain. He alone would open its glass face cover, then with invasive, mechanical surgery, set it and wind it up with a big key before closing its face again. Its thudding tick, tick, tick continued as if nothing had happened. The cuckoo clock, high on the wall was a temptation drawing little upturned faces to catch the ‘cuckoo call’ at the stroke of the hour. Hardly daring to breath or blink in case we missed it. Again, it was Granddad’s task to pull the chains that kept the little cuckoo’s heart beating. Children were not allowed to touch for fear the cuckoo would not come out to tell the time again.

The cemetery grounds were well maintained. Granddad planted and tended the lavender borders, rhododendron and laurel shrubs. He cut the long grass at the far end of the cemetery with a scythe, sometimes disturbing a rabbit or two and occasionally Nanna would be presented with a rabbit for dinner.  The cemetery was divided up into sections for Church of England, Catholic and other non-conformist burials and also a raised area separated from the rest of the cemetery by a double line of privet hedging. This was the un-consecrated section, for stillborn babies and suicides. Sometimes I would see a little white coffin waiting for burial…just left by the back door with no one in attendance…no mourners. It made me feel sad. I hope such practices are now changed. There was a mortuary in the cemetery grounds and Granddad would assist when there was a post mortem arranged. He would have to clean up afterwards and he didn’t seem to mind a willing pair of little hands to help him. Some might say that a cemetery is an odd playground for a child but Granddad and Nanna were there and it was a happy place.

The last time I saw Granddad was in his coffin in the front room of 25 Orchard St, Pelton in 1961. Nanna asked me to say goodbye but I didn’t want to. Nanna, despite being small and aged, placed her surprisingly very strong and sure hands on my shoulders and steered me through a room full of black draped mourners to where Granddad lay. There was nothing to fear…he was just asleep and a kiss on his cheek was my last farewell. Someone had placed a bowl of Christmas roses next to the coffin. Granddad, when working in the cemetery, grew Christmas roses and taught me my first words, ‘pretty flowers’. Christmas roses are so pretty and for me are forever, sweet memories of Granddad.