Domestic Life
in the 1920's
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Edie Butterworth (nee Cook) was born in Husborne Crawley and, like her parents before her, has lived in the village for most of her life. Her father, as were most of the men in the village, was employed by the Bedford Estate where he worked as a general estate labourer.

Here she recalls what domestic life was like living in one of the estate cottages in Husborne Crawley as a young girl in the 1920's.

"I was born in 1919 at No. 1 Turnpike Road, or just No. 1 Husborne Crawley as it was called then. Our house, like most of the them in the village, was a tied cottage, and I lived there with my parents Maud and George Cook and my two sisters Gwen and Phyllis. I can remember how different domestic life was when I was growing up compared to nowadays.

There was no water piped to the houses then, no kitchen tap or bathroom. There was just one cold tap at the back of our cottages which was shared by about six houses.
Water would be fetched by bucket and then placed in a pot which stood on a grate over an open fire to boil. You couldn't even have a cup of tea until the fire had been been lit. Dad used to get up at half past six to fetch the first buckets of the day. It was always quicker when my father fetched the water because he could carry two full buckets and my mother could only carry one.

Winter was always the worst time because the tap would freeze and we would have to take boiling water out to pour over it to thraw it out".
Edie with her father fetching water