During the war, my nan was a young mother with 2 little girls, and a husband who was away in India with the British Army. She lived in Granville Buildings on Luke Street in Shoreditch. Her neighbour was an older lady named Maud Burdock, who my mum and Aunt Irene grew up calling "Aunt Maud" in the way that children referred to adults in those days.
When my mum and aunt married and had families of their own, we children inherited "Aunt Maud" and I remember frequent visits, the subway from Leytonstone to Liverpool Street, and then the walk up Eldon Street, past the old horse trough and the goods yard entrance where the orangey-yellow 3 wheeled trucks whirred around inside; up Wilson Street and crossing Sun Street, past The Flying Horse pub, where often there would be a horse drawn dray delivering barrels of beer. The horse would have his mouth buried in a nose bag of food, and the draymen would be rolling the barrels off the dray and down into the cellar through the wooden trapdoors. We'd stroke the horse, sometimes we'd watch them delivering, other's we'd step around the dray and just carry on walking, crossing Worship Street, Wilson would change its name to Paul, and we'd walk to Mark Street, where Aunt Maud was living in Langbourne Buildings.
For "us kids" Mark Street and Langbourne Buildings were great. At the corner were a couple of black bollards, and we'd leapfrog (or try, when we were even younger) over them. There were a couple of old gaslights still standing, although no longer in use. St Mark's Church was active then, and the quad was behind a wall, and you'd hear children laughing and chatting as they played in there.
Langbourne Buildings were Victorian flats, and we thought they were magical. They were 4 stories high, each with an outside landing and central circular stone stairway. The acoustics were awesome. Everything resonated. I feel badly now for the people living there, as we'd stomp up those stone steps, to hear them echo.
The landings were also stone floored, and the doors were huge, about 3" thick, with a huge brass knocker that (even at 11 or 12) I could not reach. When someone knocked, it resonated with 3 or 4 echoes. We loved it.
Aunt Maud's flat was a simple one bedroom, which was to the left as you came through the front door. Her living room was to the left, and through that a scullery with a deep square sink at the end, under a grimy window, and next to that (to the left) a simple toilet. I do not remember a time in my childhood, that the toilet flushed. Aunt Maud kept a bucket in that big sink, and one of the adults would fill it to "flush" the loo after any of us kids used it.
Her bedroom was sparsely furnished - just an old high iron bed frame, a tall boy and a chest of drawers. Feather quilts covered the top of her bed, and when we'd crawl under it, feathers and dust bunnies had their domain there.
Her living room was more cramped. 2 armchairs close to the fireplace, table against the wall opposite, sideboard down the other wall (the back of which was her bedroom, and a small black and white tv in the corner.
She had a sage green chenille tablecloth on the table, that hung low. We kids would set up a "camp" underneath, sitting on the bar across the bottom. So simple, and yet it kept us happy and engrossed while the adults chatted.
In ways, Aunt Maud was a bit of a "wild one". From the time I was about 7 or 8, any time we went over, she'd give me a Babycham (a "champagne perry")making me feel very grown up. She'd admonish me, "don't tell your nan and granpop". Although my parents didn't drink or go out, she'd pour them a Harvey's Bristol Cream, a sherry, about an inch in a shot glass.
Funnily enough, when I was with my grandparents, they'd let me have cider and warn me not to tell Aunt Maud!
She had a twinkle in her eyes and a tinkly laugh, that even now, almost 50 years later, I can hear when I think of her.
What's sad is how - when you look back with adult eyes - you realise how hard it was for an 80 year old woman to live on the second floor in a building that had no lift, and how, for so many years she had a toilet that did not flush.
They razed them about 40 years ago now, as part of slum clearance. When my dad told me that, a few years ago, I was disappointed. "Oh how could they do that to those beautiful buildings" and he responded "c'mon, Rosemary, they were slums, they were bloody awful". It was only then I looked at it with adult eyes and saw what childhood innocence had overlooked.
Aunt Maud's was the first building with the long landings, half way down the street
These pics sadden me, they were taken in the 1970s just before the buildings were demolished. I've been unable to find any from my youth. A park is now where they stood. It's a nice space, a green spot in an ever-more-built-up area.
St Mark's Church still stands but is a church no more. It houses an antiques business. To be fair, the owners have done their best not to destroy the structure at all, and seem to hold a reverence for it.
Aunt Maud played a huge part in my childhood. This pic is of her holding me at Broadstairs when I was about 18 months or so, old. She died of cancer in 1969 at the old Bethnal Green Hospital. Her only surviving relative was her great-niece Angela (Green/Greene, I can't remember the spelling) who was her nephew's daughter, and was about 6 months older than me.
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