Great Horwood History |
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These two houses are the oldest in the village and date from the 1400s. The building was originally one house built using cruck frame construction. From the position of the three cruck frames there was probably one large and one small room downstairs and upstairs. During restoration work it appeared that a vertical ladder was used to get upstairs. Sometime during the 19th century the building was altered to the present two dwellings. The roof was originally of thatch but was changed to tile in the early part of the last century. Modern single storey extensions were added in the 1960s to provide a kitchen and bathroom. Previously the toilets were outside, which in winter meant a cold dark trip with a candle or torch.
18-24 Little Horwood Road were built around the turn of the 19th century. My parents moved into number 18 in 1945, when the houses were owned by Mr W Hanson of Home Farm. Each house consisted of a living room, a kitchen with pantry under the stairs, and two bedrooms upstairs. There was an outside toilet, but water had to be fetched from the pump across the road, visible in the picture below. Cooking was on a coal range in the living room, which also provided some heating, and there was another fireplace in the kitchen along with a wash boiler. My parents lived there until they passed away, my mother in 1986 and my father in 1989. Right up till this time, my parents coped with only an outside toilet and cold water in the kitchen. The houses still belonged to the Hanson family, and over the years many different families moved in and out of the other houses in the terrace. Later, when each house fell vacant, they were gradually combined to make one house, a process which started in the late 1950s.