There was a big stone sink with an enormous plate rack over it made of solid wood. The first job on a Monday morning was to light the fire underneath the copper with sticks. The copper was filled with water via a pipe from a tank that had collected rainwater from a hole in the roof. The clothes were washed in two large baths on a stand – each about half the size of a modern bath. Mrs Jerome used to come from Portchester village to do the laundry. Big wicker baskets were filled with the wet washing and the maids would hold a handle on each side and go outdoors to peg up the clothes. The washing line could be raised high with the aid of a pulley that had been rigged up by Mr Basher, so the clothes blew dry in the wind. Irons heated on the range would be used to do the ironing.


Left to right: Mother, Father, Kathleen (sister), Mrs Moore 1937. Father is smoking a clay pipe made by Leigh & Co of Portchester. He kept six clay pipes on the go. They would sit on the fender to cool off.


There was a boiler in the cellar at Murrills that ran two radiators in the winter - one in the front hall and one in the back hall. They were black, not very big, and heated the passageways. They were used to dry the washing on rainy days. A coke fire fuelled the boiler. Tom Marchant, the gardener, looked after it. Even though he lived ten minutes’ walk away, he would come back every night at ten o’clock and go down the perilous steps outside the kitchen window to the cellar to stoke the boiler. It only worked when the cellar was not overflowing with water. Every time we had heavy rain in the winter it used to flood, up to about two feet, and put out the fire. My sister and I could reach the cellar from the house and would sometimes go down the stairs and have a game which was rather fun, although it did depend on how much water was there.


In the kitchen at Murrills we cooked on an Eagle Range. It was black and had two ovens on each side and a fire in the middle. There was a flap at the front of the fire that could be lowered to make toast. I can remember the words written on the flap – ‘keep as small a fire as possible except when roasting in front’. At the bottom of the grating there was a small platform where you could rest a saucepan. Our next range was a Triplex. This had a little open fire with a tiled front and over it there was a trivet for a kettle that could be swung across the fire to have a quick boil up. At the side of the fire there were two ovens - one hot and one cooler. There was a pantry with a sink and a breakfast room where we had our lessons.


We had a little gas stove in the scullery. This was a huge room with a red stone floor that was very uneven and unsafe for walking on.


Lighting at Murrills was by small paraffin lamps with handles, which were left every morning on a large tray on the copper in the scullery. Mother insisted on dealing with the lamps herself. First of all she would take the chimneys off the lamps and clean and polish the paper- thin glass. Then she would trim the charred wicks with special scissors - a very skilled job. The wicks were just slightly shaved and curved at the end so that the biggest flame would burn in the middle and not smoke. The little lamps were refilled with paraffin and spread about the house on landings and passages and could be picked up to carry upstairs. In the dining room there was a large lamp on a pulley over the dining table. Another lamp was fixed to the wall by the dinner wagon over the large ‘butlers’ tray and a further lamp was fixed to the wall over the sideboard for carving. Father would carve the meat for us and send it out on plates for the maids. We never disturbed the maids in the kitchen when they were having their meals.


When father was at home after tea, we went into the drawing room where there was a paraffin standard lamp that could be moved about and father had a reading lamp too.


The Report • June 2019 • Issue 88 | 41


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