New Neighbours for Coronation Close

Lizzie Lane

Description

'Packed with vivid historical detail which brings this book to life. I will be first in the queue for the next instalment.' Fenella J Miller, bestselling author of The Goodwill House series.

The start of a new series from bestselling author of \The Tobacco Girls\, Lizzie Lane.

Bristol 1936
Jenny Crawford has resigned herself to a loveless marriage living hand to mouth with their two children. Like many others, husband Roy struggles to find work at the docks but a chance encounter turns the family's fortunes around.
Not only does he get regular work but they are also allocated a council house on Coronation Close on the outskirts of the city. Jenny and the children are overjoyed, this is the fresh start she could only ever dream of.
But trouble feels never too far away. With Roy spending more time with Sir Oswald Molsey bullying black shirts, Jenny is left to her own devices and eager to fit in begins to make new friends.
Thankful of peace, Jenny has her head turned firstly by an old love and then by her knight in shining armour.
Does she allow herself to glimpse a chance of happiness?
Whatever happens the consequences could be dire if Roy ever finds out.

Praise for Lizzie Lane

'It was fabulous. I got so taken up with the families and I just felt I could see the houses they lived in and the streets where they grew up.' - Reader Review

'I couldn't put it down, It didn't disappoint.' - Reader Review

'It kept me interested the whole way through.Some unanswered questions. looking forward to the next book' - Reader Review

Sujets

• Mashups
• 20th Century
• World Literature
• Historical
• Women
• Coming of Age
• Inglaterra
• Segunda Guerra Mundial
• Friendship
• General officer
• Historical fiction
• Woman
• World War II
• The Women
• City Life
• General
• Sagas
• Family Life
• Romance
• England
• Saga
• Bristol
• Seconde Guerre mondiale

Informations

• Publié par: Boldwood Books
• Date de parution: 04 janvier 2023
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781804833933
• Langue: English

Extrait

NEW NEIGHBOURS FOR CORONATION CLOSE


LIZZIE LANE
CONTENTS



Introduction


Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Chapter 25

Chapter 26

Chapter 27

Chapter 28

Chapter 29

Chapter 30

Chapter 31

Chapter 32

Chapter 33

Chapter 34

Chapter 35

Chapter 36

Chapter 37


Historical Notes

More from Lizzie Lane

About the Author

Sixpence Stories

About Boldwood Books
This book has to be dedicated to my mother, Gladys May Wills. When first married, she lived in a couple of gas-lit rooms in a shared house in Bedminster, but in the early thirties was allocated a council house in Newquay Road, Knowle West, Bristol. A proper house with indoor plumbing, electric lights and a gas stove. It was like moving into heaven. They could plug their radio into a power point; no more dragging a heavy accumulator (battery) up to the local garage to get it charged up. There was even a telephone box at the end of the street.
And they had gardens in which they could grow their own food. A number of people, including her, kept chickens and grew vegetables. Some neighbours kept goats, to which the council turned a blind eye.
My mother-in-law who grew up in the Dings recalls a pig being brought through the house to be slaughtered out in the backyard. Growing and rearing your own food was not only a necessity but profitable. The neighbours were all willing to purchase the most nutritious meat they’d see all year.
They were tough times. My mother clothed her children from jumble sales, reusing adult garments and redesigning some old-fashioned items for herself – just like Thelma Dawson
INTRODUCTION

In 1936, Great Britain was an empire and the city of Bristol one of its bustling ports. Despite the harrowing ordeal of the Great War from 1914 to 1918 when three quarters of a million men had died, and despite hunger marches and poor housing, patriotism was a way of life.
King George V and his wife, Queen Mary, a former princess of the German province of Teck, presented themselves as a family and changed their name from Saxe-Coburg Gotha to Windsor.
The government was composed of a Tory elite led by Prime Minister Stanley Baldwin.
One occurrence shook the very foundation of empire and privilege.
King George V died on 20 January 1936. His eldest son was declared King Edward VIII and the coronation date set for 12 May 1937.
The new king was known as something of a playboy to those closest to him. They were also aware of his obsession with twice-married American socialite, Wallis Simpson.
Though international media printed the story, the British press were ordered to say nothing. The public were left ignorant.
Political unrest had followed the Great War. In Germany, a new regime was marching. In Britain, too, there were marches for change from both left and right of the political spectrum. An appetite for change was in the air.
An important sign of change for the working class was the building of council estates on the outskirts of the city. The houses had indoor sanitation, electricity and gardens front and rear. The first of these estates in Bristol was called Hillfields. There followed Knowle West and Southmead. All these suburban estates were a far cry from the gas-lit slums where water was pumped from ancient culverts or hauled from even more ancient wells.
Tenements hundreds of years old predominated in the centre of the city, their twisted floorboards creaking beneath the weight of too many people, rooms divided up to accommodate the poorest of the poor. The living space was often shared with rats, mice, cockroaches and fleas. As the old buildings were demolished, the occupants were moved out to houses with gardens and modern facilities. Their world seemed to be changing, but some things had not.
Set on one of those new estates was a quiet little cul-de-sac called Truro Close, which as a mark of respect for the new king, Edward the VIII, was renamed Coronation Close. The act of homage turned out to be a little premature. King Edward was never crowned but chose to abdicate so he could marry the woman he loved.
The name Coronation Close survived and a close-knit community evolved from the debris of the one that had existed in the city centre in an improved environment that inspired hope for the future.
1
THE PITHAY, BRISTOL JANUARY 1936

That morning of 20 January 1936 seemed very much like any other morning for Jenny Crawford who lived with her husband Roy and daughters Tilly and Gloria on the top floor of a ramshackle tenement in Blue Bowl Alley in a place called the Pithay.
She felt tired. She always felt tired and knew she looked it. Not that she took time to study herself in the handsome mirror that hung above the fireplace, the only thing of beauty and value her parents had left her. She knew without looking that her features still held the attractiveness inherited from her mother, the dark grey eyes, the glossy, dark hair and creamy complexion. Mary Webster’s good looks had attracted a man of means, a tradesman who had called regularly on the elegant house in Clifton where she’d been employed as a lady’s maid. Once married she’d moved into her husband’s house in Montpelier. All had been well until the Great War from which he’d returned a broken man. Perhaps if things had been different Jenny wouldn’t have married Roy Crawford who had also joined up and came to work for her father, Henry. Not that it did much good. Her father lost interest in the business just as Roy became interested in her. The war was to blame for him losing his mind and the business failing.
Falling in love and marrying Roy Crawford had been a form of escape. He’d promised her the world, but instead a life of genteel shabbiness had changed into outright poverty.
Montpelier where she’d lived with her parents was a palace compared to Blue Bowl Alley in the Pithay, the place where Roy had been born and sworn to end his days.
They inhabited a living room and two bedrooms on the top floor of the house. The main kitchen was on the ground floor, where a fearsome Victorian cooking range heated the water for baths and its oven provided the means to cook meals. A zinc bath intended for the use of all the residents occupied the smallest room on the ground floor, where moss grew between the flagstones and mice scuttled across the floor. The ground floor was taken up by a lean-to with a deep sink and a copper – a round, deep tub with a small fireplace beneath it. This was where everyone in the block was expected to do their laundry. Once washed it was hung out on one of the profusions of washing lines that criss-crossed the yard. Larger editions of the cats’ cradles that her girls made from wool or string.
Rivers of condensation ran down the windows when the laundry was boiling away in the copper and hand washing done at the sink. In wet weather, the steam rose and condensed on the glass roof, adding to the humid atmosphere and leaving dirty puddles between the flagstones. It wasn’t much better even when it wasn’t raining. Black mould spattered the windows and green moss hung in ribbons from the cracked tiles of the sloping roof.
The other two rooms on the ground floor were in a bad way and barely useable and certainly not liveable. One was used as a coal cellar, the other was left to the fungus growing out of the walls. The living room of their flat was gas-lit and had a very small fireplace, the coal for which had to be manhandled from the coal hole out in the backyard and up six flights of stairs to the top floor.
The water pump was also out in the yard and buckets were needed to fill the flowery bowl in which they washed or to fill the kettle that sat permanently on the hob.
It seemed to Jenny that all she ever did was fill buckets and carry them up the stairs.
Before the children had arisen from their shared single bed in a room eight feet by four, she’d cracked the ice on the enamel bowl and washed her face. The water in the kettle, not yet even warm, she’d leave for her daughters.
In their absence, she patted on talcum powder to hide the bruise beneath her eye, the other reason she’d avoided looking in the mirror. Face powder would have been better, but she hadn’t had enough money for such luxuries for a very long time. Talc would have to do.
Once the fire was going, she tore pieces of newspaper to stuff into the gaps in the window frames, the panes of which were patterned with frost.
She might have been privy to the momentous event that had happened if the wireless had been working. Roy had smashed it the night before, the toe of his boot ripping into the metal mesh protecting the fragile innards: the wires and glass tubes that lit up when it was turned on.
Around five o’clock the previous evening, she’d been humming along to the music, singing in places where she knew the words. According to Roy, the volume had been loud enough to ‘wake the bloody dead’. He’d been on an early shift that morning and crashed into bed on his return from work.
Normally, he would have slept through until seven or so, then gone to the pub, then home and bed again. On this occasion, he’d volunteered for the night shift. A freighter was due in that night requiring a swift turnaround.
‘Extra money,’ he’d said to her. ‘She’s bringing in wood pulp for papermaking and suchlike. I weren’t turning it down.’
‘Of course not,’ she’d said, though knew without asking that it wouldn’t mean an increase in housekeeping.
He’d slumped into a chair and pointed at his boots.
She’d got down on her knees and began unlacing each one. Once she’d pulled them off, he’d staggered into the bedroom, pausin