Cobblers Cottage
This cottage was demolished around the mid 1950's, and when I was going to school 1940's it was still the cobbler Bill Emery who lived there on his own. As you went through the front door into his living room, then turned left into his work room, it was the left widow on the front of the house.
In the corner by the window was a huge pile of old worn out boots and shoes, as you would see a pile of old horse shoes outside the blacksmiths shop. he sat in front of his window working with his last, and a pile of new and part used hides. his tools on the table under the window. When work horses were used about the farms, it would be making and repairing harnesses.
This was a two up two down house with a fire place under the chimney you see, it had a scullery out back with a boiler (often called a copper) and toilet down the garden.
After the cobbler died, an elderly couple moved in with their two unmarried sons, both of whom worked, one Green Farm as a cowman, and the other Village Farm as a wagoner, later he became the tractor driver.
No one wanted these old houses back in the 50's as the only value to them was the land they stood on, so became building plots. The thatch was starting to rot away and leaked around the chimney and ridge, and no one in the village at that time had the skills to re-thatch them, the chap who was the thatcher had long since died.
As the new Council houses were built so the occupant of these old properties were move in, first it was ten new houses the a few years later another twenty four were built, and by that time all the very old cottages were being pulled down and new houses sprouting up in their places.
Old houses mended, Cost little less than new before they're ended.
Colley Cibber (1671 - 1757).
