Christmas is upon us and may I take this opportunity to wish all our readers Merry Christmas and a happy healthy New Year. Please spare a thought for elderly neighbours who may not have friends and family around them.
The Victorians celebrated Christmas with great enthusiasm, and it was Albert, Queen Victoria’s husband who made the Christmas tree popular.
Being one of seven children, we did not have a great deal of money, but always had a lovely Christmas with family and friends. It was tradition to have an apple, orange, and a silver sixpence in our stocking, one Christmas my mum painstakingly painted my older brother’s push bike and that was the best present ever, I think I was about 5 years old. Those were good times with no computers or electronic games costing goodness knows how much, we didn’t even have a television when I was a child until the Coronation in 1953.
I now have great grandchildren who live in a different world, and I don’t think it is a better life than we had. I do feel sorry for the younger generation when it comes to getting on to the property ladder. I married very young (I was eighteen), I earned £7 per week and my wife was on piece work in the clothing factory and she earned £14 per week. We managed to save and bought our first little back-to-back terraced house in Leeds for £135 cash, no mortgage. The reason for the house being so cheap was it was in a clearance area and marked for demolition within 2 years. In those days, the council paid a maximum of £50 per house with a guarantee of a new council house on demolition of your house. For us, we just wanted our own little house and intended to save a deposit for a better one. We lived in that house for two years and sold it for £350 to a lady who wanted a council house. That house was still not demolished for ten years after we left.
We put a deposit of £300 on our semi-detached new home and had a mortgage of £2500 at £14 per month. That’s over 50 years and I still own that house, if only the youngsters could have that opportunity.
Getting back to antiques, we have a vast selection of unique and unusual Christmas gifts in our shop including a beautifully made sledge from 1910, a Triumph Herald pedal car, a large selection of Dinky and Corgi model cars, some vintage Cindy dolls, a good selection of vintage jewellery, and loads of other junk (I mean quality antiques!)
We do like people to come and browse with no pressure to buy anything, and there is parking outside the shop.
Merry Christmas from David and Carol
Please see advert below for contact details and opening times.
