The College House: A life in Quinton
Deborah Cheesman-Knaggs wrote this lovely piece describing growing up in Quinton, what is now the University’s Security Office on Avenue Campus. This is a lovely story of happiness and warmth, thanks to Deborah for sharing her life with us.
For as far back as I remember my earliest memories, the ‘College House’ or ‘Nanny and Pop’s house’, was a part of my life.
Nanny and Pop, my grandparents, Lovell and Gladys Ada Warren, lived at the old college house before I was born, and Pop was the Superintendent Caretaker of the college, which I knew as ‘Nene College’.
My Mum, Maureen Anne, an apprentice tailoress to Mr William (Bill) Wright, was their only child, and my Dad, Derek Horatio Webb, was in the Royal Navy.
I was born on a sunny spring lunchtime on Sunday the 4th of April, in 1965, the first of three sisters.
The garden at the college house was always full of flowers, fruit, vegetables, trees and happiness, but before I go on, let me describe the old college house.
Gazing at the ‘street view’ of the house today, the building doesn’t look as though it has changed at all outside, — but the gardens, the garage and the big pear tree in the back garden that used to stand tall above the house, have all gone.
When Nanny and Pop lived there, the house was hidden from the gaze of those walking down St Georges Avenue, by tall conifers. You could only see the house if you walked down the steep road towards what was once a car park and bike sheds.
As you walked down the road, the college house would come into view.
To either side, the tall conifers sheltered the neatly clipped lawns that stood on either side of the front garden path. On both lawns were two small midland hawthorn trees that used to burst into bloom to herald the spring every year.
As a child of about 4 years old, I remember collecting a handful of those blossoms for my Nanny to put in a vase, but she refused to allow me to take them into the house, and stood on the threshold of the front door saying ‘No, not the May, Debbie. You mustn’t bring May into the house!’.
It wasn’t until years later that I found out that this was an old superstition, and Nanny was always full of ‘wives tales’ and superstition!
‘No, not the May, Debbie. You mustn’t bring May into the house!’
On either side of the college house, as you face it from the road, were walls with tall wooden back garden gates.
The one on the left led to the coal and wood sheds in the garden, while the one on the right led to the shed Pop had built.
Let me take you through a tour of the house as I remember it, when it was a family home.
As the front door was opened you were greeted by the scent beeswax polish. To this day, the smell of beeswax polish will forever remind me of ‘home’ and instil in me, feelings of happiness, security, comfort and constancy.
That is if the delicious smells of baking and cooking from Nanny’s kitchen didn’t greet you first!
L-R, Debbie (myself), Angela and Elaine. c.1970
The front door opened into a small hall. To the left was the door that led into the ‘front room’ and a small built-in cupboard for coats. In front of you was a mirror, bouncing light back into the small hallway, and a little to the right, was the door that led into the ‘sitting room’. To the far right the staircase that turned back up towards the window above the front door and the upstairs hallway.
Beneath the staircase was a beautiful old Queen Anne table that glistened with polish, and always housed an ornate vase full of pampas grass and dried flowers, and the telephone.
The front room was kept for ‘best’. It ran the full depth of the house and had windows opening onto both front and back gardens, and a big fireplace set into the interior wall.
It was decorated in a pale silver-grey and white regency wallpaper that reached up to the picture rails that were in every room. The carpet was a pale silver grey and Nanny and Pops best furniture was in this room — along with a small, fully stocked bar that Pop had built, which was situated in the corner of the room, opposite the door. The dining chairs were kept along the walls and in the corners, but there was still room for the big comfortable plush covered three piece suite and a beautifully ornate French polished sideboard with a hidden drinks cabinet.
This was the room that was used for celebrating births, marriages and deaths. It was rarely used, but always kept immaculate.
The ‘sitting room’ was the family room. A smaller, square shaped room with an open fireplace to the left as you entered. The big picture window opposite the door, gave you a full view of the garden and looked down the garden path that ran down the centre of it.
To the right was the door that led into the kitchen.
The cottage-style three-piece suite fitted the room perfectly, with nanny and Pop’s armchairs opposite the fireplace and the two-seat sofa facing the window by the side of the fire.
L-R Derek Webb (Dad), Angela Webb, Maureen Webb nee Warren (Mum) 1966
The standard lamp stood between Nanny and Pops chairs, behind the small coffee table my Pop had made, which usually housed his crosswords!
Beneath the window was the drop-leaf dining table, with a surface you could see your reflection in. This was always covered with a piece of rubber to protect the surface, before the table cloth was laid on top.
In the far corner, between the fireplace and the window, was the television. It was many years before they would have a colour set, but Nanny and Pop’s TV didn’t have the ‘50p meter’ that ours did, which often spoiled our viewing when the meter ran out!
This room was always full of light and warmth, and it was this room that was the scene for many of my early childhood memories.
The kitchen was even smaller, but despite this, it was the place where Nanny created her wonderful feasts and high teas.
As you entered the room, a small kitchen table sat to the right, beneath the kitchen window to the front of the house. Opposite the door were the stove and the sink and counters.
The kitchen table always had a big fruit bowl on top, and there were always oranges, grapes or apples and pears from the garden. Nanny used to keep her Bramley Cookers in the fruit bowl. Huge apples that she picked then waxed to keep from spoiling, and used to make countless apple pies.
To the left were two doors, — one led to the small passage that led to the back door and the toilet, the other was the door to the big pantry, a room that kept all the food, pots and pans, and big enough for two people to walk in!
Down the passage from the kitchen, the toilet sat right by the back door. This was the only room in the house I ever remember being cold, with a little square window of frosted glass and an old fashioned toilet with a high cistern. It was in every sense of the word, an old fashioned ‘water closet’, but, like the rest of the house, it was kept immaculate by my house-proud Nanny.
Let me take you upstairs!
The staircase led to a bright airy hall and directly at the top was the window above the front door. All the windows upstairs apart from in Nanny and Pops bedroom, reached the ceiling and came down to just a few inches above the floor. They also had wide windowsills that were easily used as window seats by us children. It was at this window I remember sitting and watching the comings and goings that went on late into the early hours of the morning, as the IT department was born.
I must have been about 4 or 5, so this would have been in 1969/70.
The upstairs hallway was bigger than downstairs, or seemed to me to be bigger. It had 4 doors.
As you walked back along the hall, there was a wood turner banister that led to the bathroom, above the kitchen. The toilet faced you as you entered the room, the bath ran along the wall to the front of the house, and beneath the window was the hand basin.
Next to the bathroom was the third bedroom — ‘Pop’s Room’. We used to peek into the room and it was an Aladdin’s cave, the original ‘old curiosity shop’ full of books, and magazines, boxes of old toys and memorabilia from a life well lived.
From the times we did get to sneak a peek (and no matter where she was in the house Nanny would ALWAYS know if we had opened the door to see!) — I remember the window looked out over the rear garden shrubs, and Pop’s desk was at an angle to the side of this, in front of the bookcases that ran along all the walls.
Next to this room, above the Sitting Room, was Nanny and Pop’s bedroom.
It wasn’t the biggest bedroom in the house, and only had one window, but this too was a large picture window and overlooked the back gardens and the fields beyond.
It was slightly cramped with a double bed, wardrobes, and dressers, but there was still room enough for a small army-issue canvas camp bed, that I used when I stayed there.
Above the Front Room was the ‘Big Bedroom’. I loved this room! I stayed here when I had outgrown the camp-bed. The room had the same layout as the Front Room, but the windows came down to almost floor level. There was so much space and light. Nanny and Pop’s best bedroom furniture was in here, with French polished dressers and wardrobes, and dainty china and glass dressing table sets.
There were bedside tables with matching lamps of turned wood and at night these lamps would give the large room a lovely warm glow.
The bed dwarfed me, and I remember a tall wooden headboard that gave it an almost four-poster feel.
All the woodwork in the house was in a white high gloss, and both best rooms were decorated in pretty pale pastel regency style paper. The curtains were of a heavy embroidered satin that kept the cold out, with the curtains of both the Front Room and Big Bedroom in a red and white vertical regency stripe.
The downstairs rooms all had picture rails where Nanny and Pop hung many of my Dads oil paintings.
Now let me take you outside to the magical kingdoms that were my adventure playgrounds as a child; the back garden(s).
Facing the back of the house, the back door stood to the left of the sitting room window, and slightly set back as the Sitting Room and Nanny and Pops bedroom, both stood out further from the house than the Front Room and the back door/toilet/kitchen hallway.
A path ran all the way around the house to the rear; on the right, past the Front Room window, it led down the side to one of the front gates and the coal and wood sheds. To the left it ran down the side of the house between Pop’s shed and the toilet/pantry/kitchen, towards the other front gate.
On this side the path continued along the front of Pop’s shed. This was built in a typical 1950’s style, with windows and doors almost like a chalet.
From the Sitting Room window a path ran straight down the garden to another gate in the tall wall at the very bottom, which opened onto a field.
Imagine you are standing beneath the Sitting Room window, on the path, looking directly down the garden to the gate at the bottom.
Halfway down the path there was a small wooden gate, with hedges of shrubs such as Lilac and Laburnum, dividing the garden again, this made two gardens close to the house and two gardens further away at the bottom.
For ease of description I will number them 1–4.
Still facing the bottom of the garden from beneath the sitting room window, the garden to the right is number one, the garden to the left number two.
Through the small garden gate, the garden to the right is number three and the garden to the left number four.
As you leave the house by the back door, you face garden number one.
This garden was a full length lawn, with a narrow border along the paths and a paving slab halfway down to allow you to walk onto the main garden path. At the bottom and to the right of this garden were tall flowering shrubs. Pink, purple and white Lilac, Laburnum, Broom, Beauty Bush, Myrtle, Pheasant Berry, Ornamental Currant, Spirea and a host of other well known cottage garden shrubs.
In the summer this was where the Garden table and chairs would be placed for Sunday afternoon tea and picnics on the lawn. This was ‘our’ garden, where we were allowed to play and explore although we had to stay away from the shrubs that ran down the side of this garden. The shrubs that ran down this side ran right up to the front of the shed and hid it from view if you were on the lawn, and behind the shrubs was a steep bank that fell down towards a gully that ran behind the garages further down the road towards the car park and bike sheds.
The borders were full of cottage garden flowers and there was always something in bloom, no matter what the season. Pop made a big garden bench that used to sit at the bottom of this garden, in front of the hedge that divided the gardens. In later years, as my Nanny developed osteoarthritis in her knees, the bench was moved to the path beneath the sitting room window, where Pop used to put it during the winter.
Surrounding this bench, beneath the hedge, was a huge dog-violet patch.
When I was born, on a Sunday, my Dad wasn’t able to buy any flowers for my Mum, so he went into Nanny and Pops garden and picked a huge handful of violets for her from there.
Garden number two was a higher level than garden number one, and was surrounded by a rockery supporting the top lawn.
The corner of this garden, closest to the house, is where my Dad built a lovely path through the main corner rockery and this too was full of colour from stoneworts and rockery plants.
Dominating the top lawn of garden two, was the huge old Pear tree. To this day I have yet to taste a pear so deliciously sweet and juicy! We were not allowed on this garden as children, in case we fell down the rockery, but as we grew older, we were allowed to play under it’s huge branches which gave welcome shade in the height of the summer. Nanny used to place ‘wasp-traps’ in this garden — lidded jam-jars containing a little jam, with small slots in the top where wasps may enter but not leave. We always avoided them as they were often full of wasps!
The rockery was a perfect habitat for toads and on many occasion we would laugh at Nanny shrieking as we carried our toad finds in to the house!
At the bottom of this garden, by the centre hedge, was Nanny’s Rose Garden. A rectangular bed of old garden tea roses, full of colour and heavy scent, that seemed to bloom all year round.
At the side of this garden, behind the tree and running from the front gate, behind the coal and wood sheds, to the rear garden wall, was a tall fence, dividing the gardens from the gardens of neighbours along St Georges Avenue.
Garden number three was home to Nanny’s beloved chickens! She had 12 in all, kept in a very large chicken coop Pop had built, and who provided eggs for many years. There were brown, white and fancy chickens, who laid brown and white eggs, and we’d often rush to the chicken coop to collect them as children.
Nanny named them all, and kept them long after they stopped laying. Pop used to say that they were good for nothing but broiling, as they had got so old, but Nanny would hear nothing of it. They were her pets!
One by one they all died natural deaths, until only one — ‘Clara’ — was left. She eventually died of old age at 16 years old!
The chicken coop in garden number three, was surrounded by fruit bushes; gooseberry, raspberry, black and red currants, blackberries, as well as her Bramley apple tree — and Nanny would use them all in her delicious jams, jellies and pies.
Garden number four was Pop’s vegetable plot. In the centre was his greenhouse for seedlings, tender shoots and tomatoes. All around this he grew everything from cabbages to lettuce and everything in between. Nanny and Pop had grown up in an age where people grew their own food, which they continued to do right up until Pop passed away, tending his tomatoes in his greenhouse, many years after retiring and leaving the college house.
Apart from collecting the eggs and helping to pick fruit, as children we weren’t allowed to go through the small garden gate into gardens three and four. But during the summer, we were allowed to walk down to the garden gate at the very bottom of the garden, into another world.
The gate opened onto fields, with a steep bank falling down from the back wall, which we spent many happy hours rolling down in glee.
It was always full of meadow grass, wild flowers (many of which are now rare and endangered) butterflies and the lazy buzz of bees. I remember rolling down the bank one summer and a small piece of soil came away and fell down behind me, giving me a whack on my back. Puzzled, I looked at what I thought must have been a stone, and found a small, oddly shaped bottle. It was an old Victorian ink-well and became the reason why over the coming years I would spend hours hunting old dump sites as I collected old bottles. To this day I still have the ink-well. It is not the best nor is the rarest piece in my collection, but it my most precious piece.
In the autumn, on Sunday mornings, we would walk along this field, behind the garages, to the scots pine edged playing fields beyond the car park. That is where the field mushrooms grew — and we would gather them up in arm-loads looking forward to savouring them at breakfast, along with Nanny’s chicken eggs.
I remember this field was where the college firework display took place each year too — and sitting up on the bank with the family, watching the huge fire with ‘guy’ perched on top, and the sky light up with colour and noise.
I don’t know when my Nanny and Pop first moved to the College House as superintendent caretaker, but I do know that they were living there when I was born in April, 1965.
My Dad had been discharged from the Royal Navy after having pioneering heart surgery in a Naval hospital in Singapore, and I lived with my parents and younger sister Angela, in a tied cottage in Brixworth, where my Dad was a shepherd.
In 1967, when I was two years old and my sister was a babe-in-arms, my Dad suffered from a fatal heart attack that devastated my Mum. While Mum came to terms with her loss, staying with Dads family and my baby sister, I went to live with Nanny and Pop for a year, before moving back with Mum to her new home in Southampton Road.
A few years later, my Great Uncle Ken introduced my Mum to Keith Smith, who was to become her husband and father of my sister Elaine.
Every Sunday we would visit Nanny and Pop for Sunday tea, and when we eventually moved to Stimpson Avenue, these visits would mean a walk that took us across the racecourse.
On Sundays, after church and dinner, we would set off to nanny and Pops house. We’d walk to the pavilion on the racecourse where we would stop for a rest and play in the park. I remember the slide was so high, and there was a ‘witches hat’ a see-saw and swings. Then we would set off across the racecourse towards St Georges Avenue and the college house.
In the summer we would be almost faint from heat after the walk and would love the cool shade of the trees as we approached Nanny and Pop’s house, — in winter we would run and play in the snow covering the racecourse, until our toes were numb with cold.
I used to suffer from chilblains a lot as a child, and Nanny would always take off my shoes and socks to dry, while she rubbed my feet back to life with warm towels. One of Nanny’s remedies for my chilblains was goose fat rubbed around my toes!
Once we arrived, we would head to the garden to play if the weather was nice, or we would get out our box of toys and play with them by the fire as our parents and grandparents chatted and prepared tea.
At tea time, Pop would bring the butter in out of the pantry and set it in the hearth to warm and that was our cue to ‘clear the decks’.
The chairs would be brought in front the front room, and the drop-leaf dining table was pulled into the centre of the room, with its rubber boards and table cloth being set on top, ready for all the salads and cold meats and jellies and cakes that we would enjoy at tea.
The table would fill the room, so during winter or when the weather was too bad for us to be outside, my sisters and I would crawl under the table and watch the tv form this ‘den’ until we were ready to eat.
In the summer, we would have our Sunday tea outside in the garden.
At the end of the day, Pop would drive us back to our house, where my sisters and I would usually all be asleep by the time we arrived.
At weekends and during the holidays, if the weather was too bad to be outside, Pop used to let us go with him into the college as he did his rounds and made repairs. We used to love running up and down the corridors!
Pop used to give us a special treat when the World Cup was on. Keith, my step-dad was a referee and Pop was a member of Spencer football club (where his plaque is still hanging on the clubhouse wall), but back then, we didn’t have a colour TV, so Pop got special permission allowing us to watch the colour TV in one of the college lecture rooms. It was fascinating to see colour images!
l-r, Nanny, Dad, Me, Mum, Angela.
At one time, Nanny became the surrogate mum for a family of wild cats that roamed the campus grounds. There were about ten in all, and no-one could get near them but her — they would hiss, spit, and scratch, fearlessly standing their ground before running off in to the shrubs and growling at you. Nanny was the only person able to get near them, bribing them with plates of cat food and milk every day. Eventually they became a nuisance to the college and the RSPCA were called to collect them, which upset my Nanny, until she was assured they would be cared for.
Pop also had one of the garages further down the road from the college house — on the same side of the road as the house there was a garage block, and his was on the right hand side, about 5 garages down. I remember being fascinated by the old WWII gas mask he kept there.
Pop was a member of the Royal Naval Reserve and had worked on the railways during WWII, transporting munitions, and based at the Railway House in Stewartby. In later years he ran the local Sea Cadet Troop in Northampton, where he was Lieutenant Commander.
Although Pop was a Northamptonian, my Nanny was born in Norfolk, where she was a book-binder. She moved to Northampton after she met and married my Pop, and spent many years as a cleaner at Spencer school.
They were married in 1931, and were truly soul mates, celebrating 49 happy years of marriage until Pop passed away in 1980, a year before their Golden wedding anniversary.
The majority of those years were spent at the college house.
So the next time you look at ‘Quinton’ and see an integral part of campus life, spare a thought for her history.
Within those walls, are the memories of the love and laughter. tears and sadness, of a family who will always hold her in fond memory. I know I always will.
So the next time you look at ‘Quinton’ and see an integral part of campus life, spare a thought for her history.
Within those walls, are the memories of the love and laughter. tears and sadness, of a family who will always hold her in fond memory. I know I always will.
Deborah Cheesman-Knaggs
In memory of my Nanny and Pop,
Lovell Warren 1910–1980 and Gladys Ada (nee Farr) 1912–1991
