A St John's Wood house in 1950

He told me about his father’s house in St John’s Wood. It was rather large and had a garden full of apple and pear trees and flowering cherries too. It was beautiful in the spring with all the blossom, not like being in London at all.

It was a delightful house, early Victorian with a high walled garden. The blossom was over, but there were masses of roses just coming out and the  flower beds were filled with tree lupins of the most beautiful colours.  Against the house there was a grape-vine.  All the rooms on the hall floor had three large windows that opened inward, and they had small iron balconies. The house seemed filled with sun and air. The kitchens were semi-basement, but were large and homely, with great cupboards and dressers let in the walls, and the floors were made of red tiles. There were three large bedrooms and a small dressing room upstairs and the most wonderful modern bathroom that his father had put in quite recently. There was another flight of stairs that led to the attics,  but only the maid’s bedroom was furnished; but one room was simply stiff with lovely olf fashioned toys, a snorting rocking horse and a huge Noah’s Ark filled with beautifully made animals, not beastly flat animals like they have in modern arks.