ANTIQUES

In the last issue, we wrote about a Parisian apartment discovered untouched for 100 years. John Minns was invited to view a similarly preserved time capsule in England

A little over a month ago, I was at home deliberating as to whether to go to an open-air collectors market. It was raining hard with further weather predictions of sleet and possibly snow to follow. I found myself ruminating on what treasures I could miss out on by not attending, when a text arrived out of the blue from a property project manager colleague, giving me the address of a property close by and instructions to “Get over here sharpish, there’s something very interesting I thought you might like to see”. All thoughts of the collector’s market quickly diminished, and I made haste to the specified location.

When I arrived at the property, it revealed a stunning Edwardian house in its original unrestored state but in an extremely run-down condition. I watched as a high-sided 16 cubic yard skip, filled to the brim with carpets, pots, pans and old and varied household goods, was hoisted on to its loader. This would be the first of ten skips that would eventually be used in the clearance of the property. I was met by my project manager chum, who told me I had a limited time to assess, appraise and isolate the contents of the building, as restoration work would be starting imminently. A large cleared room had

been set aside for anything deemed of interest to me.

I entered the hallway, stopping to scan the two large rooms on either side of it. Apart from the erosion and decomposition that time had naturally created, everything there seemed to be as it would have been in Edwardian times. Original brown paintwork and the fashionable and expensive handprinted wallpaper of the day, with chrysanthemum flower, fruit and butterflies intertwined with vines, still adorning the walls. There were exquisite ceiling lights and heavy floor-length velvet window drapes now covered in thick layers of dust, untouched since being positioned there over a hundred years earlier. I made my way to the top of the building, where there were six bedrooms in all. A number of the bedrooms were literally filled from floor to ceiling with goods. Paintings, furniture and clothes from the 1930s, ceramics, bisque headed dolls, toys, used stamps, tinplate toys, suitcases full of books, knitting and clothes-making patterns, along with huge amounts of ephemera including photographs and reams of personal correspondence dating from the mid-Victorian era to this last decade.

After making my way down to the basementscullery and lower storage areas, there were more items: chocolate and jelly moulds, plates and an endless amount of other kitchenalia. I calculated that there must have been tens of thousands of items throughout the building, making it the most comprehensive and diverse range of stored or hoarded goods in a private home that I had ever encountered.

So how did such a vast amount of items accumulate at the property over ten decades? In conversation with a distant relative and beneficiary to the property, and searching through various items of correspondence found at the house, a number of things came to light. A Mr. and Mrs Few purchased the house shortly after it was built in 1910. The Fews were brought up during the Victorian era and it would seem that they adhered to the ideologies at that time of resourcefulness, frugality and thriftiness, added to the ethos of not wanting to let an item go, even if it had been damaged or broken (another Victorian trait).

Discarding anything would have been anathema to them; any item remotely of use or value would have been considered possede a vie or ‘owned for life’ and virtually nothing was thrown away.

It appeared that the Fews may have instilled these values into their three children, born at the house. When rationing was introduced in the early part of WWII and later the Make Do And Mend campaign came along, the siblings, now in their 20s and 30s, must have taken on the government request with gusto. The last surviving family member, Katheleen Few, lived alone at the house until she was 104, presumably happily hoarding right up until the end.

MAKE DO AND MEND

After clothes rationing was introduced in 1941, people were encouraged to be more resourceful, to make new clothes from old fabrics, table cloths, curtain linings, discarded or damaged uniforms, while even parachutes (invariably made from silk) were turned into blouses and undergarments. So popular was the reaction from the general public and various women’s groups at that time, including the WVS (Women’s Voluntary Service) and the WI (The Women’s Institute ) that a Make do and Mend scheme would later be introduced by the Ministry of Information. The nationwide campaign was received enthusiastically, with pamphlets, posters and cinema newsreel trailers extolling the virtues and value of recycling, thriftiness and frugality. Another government instruction was to ‘Revive and Repair’, meaning to to learn new skills like knitting, darning, sewing, and the general home maintenance that would have previously been the job of tradesmen now conscripted into the services.

THE FLUMMOXER

Readers are invited to ponder the purpose of this issue’s antiquity conundrum, and one provider of the correct answer wins a superb pair of Fox Cufflinks.

Send your answer to chap@thechap.co.uk

D. B. Spats correctly identified last issue’s Flummoxer as an Edwardian mother-of-pearl inlaid hemming pin cushion

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