Admin/biog history
INTRODUCTION [written by A g Underwood]
Some background information is necessary in making sense of much of what I wrote here.
When my grandfather retired and sold his Flitt Motor Co Ltd in 1948, the electrical and cycle side of the business was taken over by my father, in partnership with my mother, and based on my grandfather's property at 3-5 Church St, Ampthill. (Shortly purchased by my parents.)
My father's new business opened in 1948 from the lock-up shop at 3 Church Street: we continued to live at 41 Bedford Street. My father's shop had been the dining room of the house, now 3-5, in the previous century, converted into a shop in the early 20th century, and into a car showroom by my grandfather in the early 1930s - or thereabouts.
Outbuildings, formerly stables and drying rooms for the herb farm harvest associated with the chemist’s, and latterly occupied by the army in the war, were made available to my father as stores, workshop, garage, etc. They were approached from the main road through the gateway between 5 and 7 Church Street. In one of the upper rooms of the outbuildings I formed a museum (aged then about 16) which received coverage on a number of occasions in the Ampthill News and other local papers.
When we opened the shop the main part of the house was occupied by a Mrs Amy Sharpe, her daughter and son-in-law. Mrs Sharpe's husband, Reg, had been a builder but had left home before the time of these letters and was then living with somebody else at Marston. A large room above the house kitchen was let to the Ministry of Fuel and Power for the Local Fuel Office. The 1st floor drawing room, above our shop, had for many years been the surgery of a dentist, S. Sanders, whose son had the practice at this time.
5 Church Street had been a chemist's shop since the house was built in the 1820s. At this time, it was newly leased from my grandfather by Bill Cheeseman, who lived with his wife Freda and young son David, in a flat behind and above (1st floor) the shop at no. 5.
As soon as we opened the shop plans were made to remove Mrs Sharpe and her family, the dentist, and the Fuel Office so that we could occupy the house. This finally came about in April 1951. At the end of the summer term, 1951, I left Bedford Modern School and began to work for my father — not a success at all — thoroughly boring for me and (I’m sure - although they never said) a great disappointment for my parents.
The house, although altered in places, was much as it had been built by the Mays in the late 1820s, and apart from sealed doorways to the flat above no. 5, very much as it had been when the last of the Allens (successors to the Mays) moved out in the 1890s.
On the ground floor was a large kitchen with entrance from the yard. From here the back stairs (sealed off till we got there) led to a very high room occupied by the Fuel Office. (This became our bathroom - palatial - far too large!) Next to the kitchen was the dining room, panelled in pine (painted dark brown over the original Georgian cream) with a fine cornice. The panels only covered three of the walls, but someone (Reg Sharpe, we supposed) had provided the missing section which backed onto the stairs. A tiny room off the dining room, more of a cupboard, became the office: it had been a pantry at one time. In the same wall, which contained the window, a panel opened to reveal a magnificent display cupboard with curved back, arched top and narrow shelves. [Later in the writer’s sitting room at Foulislea Cottage.]
Above the dining room (older than the rest of the house) was a room formerly the Fuel Office waiting room. This had a comer fireplace, panelled dado, and wallpaper pasted onto canvas between that and the cornice. I itched to peep behind the canvas but had to wait several years before getting the chance. I then found two walls fully panelled - the one backing onto the stairs, and that containing the window.
There was only one window in this room, and any probing with a penknife showed that there had been two, the latter blocked by an exterior extension which contained the lavatory. In the blocked window recess was a painting of glazing bars through which climbing roses were set against a very blue sky. The painting was loose, and to my everlasting regret, I didn’t dare to make a hole big enough to extract it! (I had been in awful trouble for removing canvas from the staircase walls and revealing odd bits of panelling here and there and a cupboard on the landing - a venture undertaken while my parents were on holiday as a surprise for their return. It was!!! There was no DIY philosophy in those days, and materials were hard to come by.) This room with a fireplace was for a time the sitting room of a former German POW from the camp in Ampthill Park - Heinz Mehner, and his English wife Penny. He was an electrician and helped my father get established. When they left (after a ‘scene') the room became my parents' bedroom, later a cycle store, ultimately, after my parents moved to Lea Road, try study.
The second flight of stairs (very steep - the lower staircase was a beautiful genteel Georgian one - I think it had been moved from elsewhere in the house) led from the landing outside the above room, to the top floor. Here (Oh, so cold in winter) was a bedroom facing south, with views of Sharpenhoe Clapper. At first this was the Mehner's room, then my sister's, then mine and ultimately, when I created my own flat on the top floor in the late 1960s, my kitchen.
Overlooking the White Hart yard was a small room, first my sister's, then my sitting room, for a time my bedroom, ultimately the spare room.
There were rooms in the front of the house, a very large one with three windows which began as my parents’ room and finally (with dummy fireplace and surround made by Ian Page) became sitting room. Next door, with windows, was my bedroom, later sitting room/study, finally bedroom again.
Between this front bedroom and the south-facing one was a cupboard with boarded back which I, naturally, removed, to discover a passage leading to a bolted six-panel door. This opened onto a remarkable feature — a vast area, unfinished from the 1820s, void between the ceiling joists of the Cheeseman’s flat below and the roof, with two windows overlooking the Market Square and a third the back yard. Between the rafters stretched row upon row of string where in the last century, the Allen’s had dried bunches of herbs - mostly lavender - ready to use in their distillery. Planks across the joists of the ceiling below had obviously formed a catwalk for reaching the herbs. From then on I had visions of this area as an extension of my territory - but nothing came of my plans, and it was left to the Cheeseman’s, who bought the property from my parents some 20 years later, to do something about it.
During the very late 1940s and early 1950s I had been much involved with Mrs Marion Du Sautoy (a friend of my Great Aunt ‘Poker’) who lived at 97 Dunstable Street. Her husband had died in 1947 leaving her the vast (then undivided) house crammed from attic to cellars, outbuildings and barns, with the possessions of his unmarried or childless dead maternal relatives of earlier generations, which had been brought to Ampthill and tucked away. Mrs Du Sautoy had very poor eyesight indeed, and was in any case quite elderly, so welcomed my help whenever I could give it.
The clearing out of No. 97 unearthed an overwhelming mass of Victoriana and earlier bric-a-brac, then of no real interest to such dealers as there were: how different things would be today. Because of my ‘museum' and because I was genuinely interested, I was offered a great deal - and accepted it. (And there is another story.) Then Mrs Du Sautoy gained possession of her adjoining house, 99 Dunstable Street, which she had repaired and redecorated prior to moving in herself. For much of the time this was going on she was staying at a hotel in Bournemouth or with her sister in Ireland, and I acted as her Ampthill agent. (I also kept an eye on 'The Garden Opposite' - where the supermarket is now.)
My interest in the Georgian period was almost inevitable given my historical inclination and Ampthill up-bringing, and the combination of my 97/99 Dunstable Street experiences with the move to the 1820s 3 Church Street at a time when I was ready to develop an independent life-style was an overwhelming influence on all my thoughts and activities at that time.
And then, in September 1952 I was called up for my National Service. I went with considerable foreboding, but evetually found it a most valuable experience, having a much more interesting job than most of my contemporaries. Nevertheless, there were long hours of total boredom and inactivity - particularly in training at Aldershot and on the six-week troop ship voyage to Japan. As in the 1690s Lord Ailesbury enlivened his incarceration in the Tower of London by designing imaginary gardens which would be far too costly to create, so I spent my time devising schemes to make a library in the void adjoining my bedroom, and otherwise develop the property. In my letters I bombard my father with orders to get this and that done before I come home the next time, etc., etc. Of course, he didn’t do it. To start with, he couldn’t afford my grandiose schemes, and even if he had wanted to, he would not have been able to get the necessary permits then required for building materials.
But it gave me something to think about, and I achieved some of my domestic ambitions in the late 1960s at 3 Church Street, and probably all of them - except the cottage in Suffolk - at Foulislea Cottage from the 1970s.