Where I have lived

 

I first lived independently when I went to Oxford. For my first two years I lived in college:  for the first year I was in the garden quad where I shared a double room with Robin Baxter, who I had only said farewell to a month previously as he had been on the Russian course together. He was also reading Greats and we got on well apart from the fact that he smoked like a chimney. He was keen on music, and was a very good pianist and became president of the jazz club. When we both went off on Saturday afternoons to practise our relevant themes, we said to each other “Dig well!”  He also taught me how to tie a bow tie and ever since I have worn bow ties on and off for most of my life.

For my second year I was able to make my own choice, and I chose to live in the Holywell buildings, the 1870s building facing onto Holywell, just outside the city walls.  I had a fine room facing out onto the gardens, with a bedroom at the back facing out onto Holywell. I was able to entertain members of the Archaeological society there for tea and crumpets after we had cycled back from our digs on Saturday afternoons.

But for my last two years, I was out of college. For my first term I found digs in north Oxford, a 20-minute cycle ride from the centre. I suppose they were just about alright but not very good, and at the end of the first term the landlord said could I move out. They were an elderly couple, but I was in the habit of returning about 10, but this was too late for them, so they asked me to go. However this turned out to be a stroke of good fortune, for when I was looking around, I met a fellow Russian linguist called Chown – I can’t remember his Christian name – who said why not come in with me, and introduced me to a splendid flat just off Holywell Street at Bath Place which was a cut through from Holywell to the main entrance of New College in New College Lane. My room overlooked a well-known pub, the Turf Tavern: sadly I have never been a pubby sort of person – I suppose I was a tea-totaller in my younger days, and only in middle age have I learn to drink wine. I don’t think this was ever from moral disapproval – it is just that I did not come from a drinking background and I am by nature conservative. I think my rooms was slightly more expensive than average – was it £4/10/0 rather than £4?  but it was right in the centre, adjacent to the college, and I was very happy there.

After Oxford, I didn’t know quite what to do. I wanted to do a ‘proper job’, which to me meant industry, so I set out to be a management trainee. I haunted the jobs centre – I think it was the university Appointments Bureau – and I sent off applications to dozens of firms. The ones that I fancied most were the advertising agents, and I had interviews with several of them, but it was of course hopeless – I would have loved to be a copywriter, but you needed to have written a couple of novels or edited a student newspaper for that – and I did not have the charm and social awareness to be a front man. Computers were very novel and sounded interesting, but basically I just tried for anything to do with management training.

I applied to dozens of firms, all of which turned me down, and eventually I was taken on by Bakelite in Birmingham. They were suitably industrial, and were situated at Tyseley, the industrial area of Birmingham. However there were no suitable digs in the area, and the most suitable area seems to be to the west at Edgbaston where the University was situated, but it was a bit too posh and expensive for me, so eventually I found accommodation in Mosely, a sort of middle-class appendage to Edgbaston at 68 Salisbury Road, a modest middle class house where I had rooms on the first floor overlooking a very nice garden. There were two elderly gents on the ground floor, and I was able to entertain my girlfriends there, and I cycled everyday to work – about a 20 minutes cycle ride.

But after a year I was sacked from Bakelite I really didn’t fit in decided that I ought to become a Chartered accountant, and that I should look at London which turned out to be the place for me. I applied to a number of firms, and eventually I was taken on by Smith and Williamson, a small firm with 8 partners, situated in a part of Bucklersbury House right over the Roman mithraeum. .

I didn’t quite know where to live, but I was in contact with my old school friend David Fairburn who was studying to be a solicitor, who suggested I should come and live with him at the Belsize Square Residential Club, 31 to 34 Belsize Square, London. It was very down-market accommodation in a rather posh part of London, not far from the Swiss Cottage underground station. It is now very posh indeed, but it had the advantage in that there were a lot of foreign girls who were eager to make friends.

I stayed in the club a couple of months, then I found a flat at 130 Haverstock Hill just by the Belsize Park underground station where I spent 4 years. It was not really a flat, just a small single room, a rather small room on the second floor of a Victorian house. It was owned by an Indian gentleman, but it was managed by an Irish lady, Mrs Meehan who lived on the top floor.

I was able to invite my friends in during the evening, and there was a small stove on which I cooked omelettes and occasionally even a pork chop, and there was always a pile of the Financial Times which I took daily as an aid to my accountancy studies. It was here that I brought Wendy after that momentous Italian holiday. We enjoyed ourselves: there was only a standard size single bed, so it was always a squash to get together, but when one is young, one can always make do with a single bed.  Mrs Meehan watched over us like a dragon to see that she did not stay overnight, and there was always a rush at 11 o’clock to get her onto the last 24 bus down to Pimlico, but when we finally got engaged, Mrs Meehan was delighted and insisted that Wendy should move in, and she found us a slightly bigger room at the back of the house with a double bed. Wendy moved in, and we in fact got married from our little room and spent the first year of our married life there.

And it was here that we planned to launch Current Archaeology. The big problem was: where should we live?  Wendy’s father suggested look for a business premise, possibly a redundant shop with a garage. He had worked in local government and had seen numerous examples of people who are running into difficulties in running businesses for private homes. Often it was a hairdresser who had left her job to get married and then as the children grew up, she began doing hair for her friends, and it soon became a business with cars coming and going and doors being slammed throughout the day and the neighbours complained. So we spent a lot of time looking for business premises, in vain.

However a different reply came from Stuart, who was learning to be a Chartered Surveyor and was articled to Debenham Tewson and Chinnock, one of the leading firms of Chartered Surveyors. His principal heard of our problem and suggested we should look for an ordinary house. He pointed out that many small businesses were run from private houses – it was a grey area, and the important thing was to keep a low profile, don’t broadcast to your neighbours that you are running a business or do anything to annoy them. We took his advice and bought a private house and got away with it for more than 40 years.

We looked for a house in a cheaper area in inner London – it was all the code for and Islington was an up and coming so we concentrated on the and eventually found a lovely Georgian house at 128 Barnsbury Road which we bought for £6,000.  It proved to be a very good choice. It is faced West and opposite there was a piece of derelict land that was designated to become a park, and in the three years we were there, it began to be developed as a park, and the prospects of the house zoomed, so eventually we sold it for £12,000.

We bought it from an Australian who had intending to rent it out, but had not realised  all the problems of rent control and realised it was rather more difficult that he though, so he gave it up and sold it to us. To our surprise, he just walked out, leaving us all the furniture – such as it was. It was a very spartan collection of furniture for cheap rental rooms, but it was nevertheless a very valuable start. One or two pieces survived – in particular a stout wooden ladder which I remember.

It was a wonderful house in a wonderful position, but it needed doing up. The only bathroom was a shed in the garden just outside the back door. What is more, the only loo was tacked on to the end of the bathroom, so you had to go outside the backdoor into the garden, round the bathroom to get to the loo. I remember that an archaeologist, Euan MacKie came to spend the night with us, and how appalled he was at the idea of having to go out into the garden to go to the loo.

We painted a lot of rooms while we were there, and we learnt how to wallpaper, but we never got round to getting builders in to do the major upgrade that was needed, as we were too busy launching Current Archaeology. There was an interesting episode with the post. When we arrived there was a pillar box right outside the house but it was removed almost as soon as we began as it was little used, though as soon as we began, we used it a lot. But we did however get our own postcode. They were just introducing postcodes as we began so our use justified our having our own postcode, just for Current Archaeology. However soon after we moved away and ever after we used the general NW3 2TX post code which we shared with the rest of Nassington Road, even though we and the doctors were by far the biggest users.

However after a couple of years, in I think 1970, we moved away from Barnsbury Road. This was thanks to the generosity of my parents. My parents decided to give the money that would be coming to us on their death now, and urged us to look for a bigger house in a better area, which meant Hampstead. This was very generous and thanks course ultimately to Uncle William

Wendy therefore began house hunting in Hampstead, travelling over there frequently. She got to know all the estate agents, several of whom would often give her the key to a house so she could look round by herself. One of these agents, David Jaffe, said he had heard of a house in Nassington Road which he thought was about to come on the market and we looked at it from the outside and thought it looked very suitable. Eventually it appeared from another estate agent, so our estate agent did a  quick selling job and went to the old lady and said he had a client who was very keen so could he have the agency just for the one client – us! So in effect he had the agent was working for us !

When we got into it, we were amazed – it was much bigger than expected. It lies on a hill slope, and though it was only three stories at the front, it was four storeys at the back,, with the kitchen and dining room leading out into the garden. And then there was that magnificent view, right out over London. I have always though it is the best view in London!  We had certainly not expected just how good it was. Unfortunately the surveyors report pointed out that it was on a steep slope, and there would always be a danger of subsidence. However David Jaffe said go down to the end of the road to the Heath, and look up and you will see a classic example of  In Hampstead there’ll always be a danger of landslide, so we took the risk, and apart from the dry summer of 1973, we have been lucky.

Nassington Road was a huge success for 47 years. We brought up our children there, we ran Current Archaeology from there, so it became one of the best-known addresses in archaeology. We had the Heath right by us: turning right we came to the playing fields, turn left and then right, and up to Parliament Hill. In the summer I swam in the ponds and we had a wonderful life. We were very lucky in spending our life in Nassington Road.