The Family Home



Photo taken in 1946

When I say it is a family home you imagine a farm or homestead, but ours is neither.  Instead it is a comfortable four bedroom home two blocks from the main street in the good part of town.  My great grandfather Charlie Lancaster purchased this house for £1,200 in the 1940’s.  I look at photos taken in this era and see little has changed.

The tiles that edge the front steps are left over from the construction of the local swimming pools and are awash with watery blues and pale aquas.  The tiles are not the only remnants of the past: there is a small casement door into our pantry where the baker would leave his wares.  The door still opens although there is at least 30 years worth of cobwebs now covering it.  This door was a favourite escape route for Dad and his brother when they lived here as children.

My bedroom was once the formal sitting room.  The fireplace is nestled into the fifth wall and is surrounded by tiles the colour of dried blood.  The ceiling is crossed with heavy beams that are also found in the entry and lounge room but the look is softened by the stained glass in the top panel of the door and the diamond glass in the double hung sash windows.  The window sill is so deep that I could comfortably sit on it and read, soaking up the warmth of the afternoon sun in winter. 

My great grandmother passed away in about the same spot my mother now sleeps, but the only ghosts that haunt our house are more like echoes of the past: faint remembrances of how things used to be.  Dad will occasionally pause in mid conversation, and looking through time, say, “the kitchen dresser used to sit against this wall”.

For nearly 70 years this house has been the background of our family history and like the memories we carry with us, the house doesn’t feel that old.