HOME, WORK, And Other Stories
Some useless information about Raybould descendant Ian Charles HILL

My parents Agnes née Raybould and Charles Hill married in 1921 and lived, probably rented, at

38 Colonial Road, Birmingham.

They moved at some time to

107 Cartland Road, Bournville, Birmingham

The Beginning: I was born in 1928, in Birmingham’s Maternity Hospital in Loveday Street, Birmingham. Their gifts to me were to become my father’s body and my mother’s brain.

The World of Work: They were probably still both working at Cadbury’s, Bournville, but in her sister Gladys’s memorial papers it says that Cadbury’s wouldn’t employ married women; in that case I don’t know what she did. In those days my mother would anyway have given up any paid job on my birth and worked even harder and longer, for nothing, as a full-time mother. My birth made her very ill and ruined her chances of having a second-born.

How My Parents Met: Cadbury’s again. My mother was friends with Nelly, my father’s sister, and they all met up on a ramble.

A Colourful Yarn: On that countryside walk mother looked over a field and commented on the mass of beautiful red poppies; “What poppies?” my future father said. He himself hadn’t realised at the time, but it turned out that he was red-green deficient colour-blind. She was worried about their baby when it was due – would I be colour-blind, too? They had to wait till I was old enough to answer their tricky questions with coloured toys and the like. Don’t worry – No. Oh! You wouldn’t have worried? Ah, well. At least I’m pleased.

I remember four events before the age of about 5:

Eating the Garden: Barely toddling, a freshly-dug bit of garden surrounded by (to me) huge rocks, looked delicious, so I stretched my tiny arm out and sampled it; Ugh ! Is it hindsight that made me think it was chocolate ?

Motor racing: A snowy day, with the red rounded bonnet on my pedal car; on a later day I let it race downhill and turned a sharp corner, where my mother, looking back from our front gate, was convinced I had rolled over into the road… I hadn’t.

Jogging: Coming back one evening from somewhere, nearing home, over my father’s shoulder, half asleep, rocked by his gentle walking movement, while he and mother chatted.

The Tale of the Dog: We had a terrier; he let me turn him out of his kennel while I crawled in. The back garden had a gate to the field at the back. One day the dog was poorly – it had cut its paws on some broken glass near the gate; it had to be put down. Mother leaned against the hall wall and cried when she answered the phone telling her about it.

At about the age of 5 we were for a very short time

Over a shop in Stratford Road, Birmingham.

Fire! I remember seeing through the upstairs window a car driving along the road, with the bright sun shining on a rounded part of the roof: I was convinced it was on fire. Then we moved to a brand-new house at

360 Sarehole Road, Hall Green, Birmingham

Making a stink: I remember going with my father to the half-constructed house, where the ground-floor joists were laid over a cavity with bare earth left under it, about 2 feet deep, before the floorboards were laid; my father had a pot of creosote, with which he painted all the floor joists.

The Neighbourhood: After we moved in, further up the road houses were still being built; I remember being told how dangerous the lime-slaking pit was if I fell in. At the back of the house was a field all the neighbours enjoyed, including a big party to celebrate King George V’s Silver Jubilee. A pretty stream ran through it, overhung with trees, with shallows where I could paddle and see tiny sticklebacks, and a gloomy place where a drain discharged into the river, with dangerous black quicksand.

I used to walk about a mile to my first school in Stratford Road. One of my teachers had been my mother’s teacher.

Marguerite: Here there arrived my adopted sister Marguerite, about 1935-6. Around 1937 my father got a new job on the other side of the city, when we moved to

84 Yardley Green Road, Little Bromwich, Birmingham 9

Building History 1: Father bought the house, built 1908 in the Garden City style, from my mother’s aunt Annie, who had just remarried for the third time (at her end she had been widowed three times and never had children) and moved to her new husband’s house nearby. We had no internal WC, water in the kitchen only and an Ascot boiling water heater, and no bathroom till I had them put in in 1947. Everything was gas until my father got an electrician to modernise before we moved in.

A Death in the Family: Marguerite died of diphtheria aged 8 in late 1942.

National Service: I was called up in 1949 and lived in

Guillemont barracks near Farnborough, then in Ripon, then in Egypt at Fayid and Fanara, then

Back home in Birmingham, 1951

Priority One, Find a Job: I first worked in the drawing office of the Company Architect at Dunlop Rubber Company in Erdington, then commuted to a private firm of architects Hellberg & Harris in Coventry.

A Coincidence: Grandpa Raybould was listed once as a Rubber Worker.

Leaving home: On the last day in December 1959 for the Big City and Great Things, to a temporary lodging in London, before a flat in

4 Homer Street, Marylebone, London

What the Streets of London Were Paved With: Wilma, in the office of architect Ernö Goldfinger in Piccadilly. Met and married in 6 months, and never regretted a minute.
We had just both resigned from Mr Golfinger and lived in

36 Mill Lane, Greenfield, Bedfordshire

Building History 2: A thatched cottage, two knocked into one, with an internal tiny bathroom off the kitchen which drained soapy water into a stinky open ditch behind, and a truly modern chemical closet (really just a bucket) in a shed in the garden. In the house, we painfully learned to duck our heads while crossing a room from one side to the other.

Public Service: I worked for nine months in the office of Luton Borough Architect, then changed to the County Architect’s Department in Bedford. We bought a site and designed together a single-storey house where we moved to

32 Wood End Lane, Pertenhall, Bedfordshire, MK44 2AS

Building History 3: The contract, of course, was late. I learned, well into the contract, that it was the builder’s first, and he had only ever helped build a cowshed before. When we really had to move in there were no floor finishes, no curtains, no internal doors, undecorated, and still damp from constructing the place. Christmas 1962 – the beginning of the coldest winter for years – six weeks continously below freezing.

Bringing Up Babies: We brought up our family of Geoffrey and Anna in the country there.

Saying Goodbye: Wilma died in 1988, of brain cancer, in the same month that I formally retired from 27 years with the same employer, having spent most of the previous year looking after her deteriorating condition – hospitals, surgery, and radiation treatment, the NHS in London, Luton, Cambridge and Bedford battling their best. The children married and left home. I sold our little Heaven On Earth and retired alone to a first-floor flat in 1993 at

19 Fenner’s Lawn, Cambridge CB1 2EH

Sports Report: It looked out onto the cricket field. I never had any interest in the sport, but I enjoyed the space and the public milling about.

A Second Coming: Remarried, to Liz Leigh in 1995, a widow, and then 1996 both moved to her house at

40 Highsett, Cambridge CB2 1NZ

Building History 4: A modern terrace house in a 1964 estate. You can judge how modern it it has a flat roof. We did some decorations and adaptations; near to the town centre, buses and trains; visits here and there; holidays abroad, country walks, new places and friends.
Liz died in 2012, of advanced Alzheimer’s.

Still Here: At the time of writing, yes. Lonely? Well, I do my best to meet people, do things, volunteer with a coffee morning for dementia patients; go to lectures – I have given about 200 to the local University of the Third Age, but not now. Have I got a Lady Friend? I wish: but there will be nobody like my Wilma.