Dorothy Andrews (later Dorothy Fleming) grew up in Howlands in the 1920s. In 2003, she recorded an hour-long interview with Hazel Weedon (see the Voices section of this site) with a lot of detail of life in the cottage. Here are just a few details:
……..three bedrooms, kitchen, sitting room and buttery. No fridge. Ten children, four boys, four girls. Lighting was by paraffin and hurricane lamps. Open fire in kitchen for heat and cooking. Had a copper and a bread oven.
Only had one cold tap, mangle. Before tap, had to fetch water from next door’s well or from land ditches, no fertilizer then. When well ran dry, the boys went to village fountain. Didn’t have a range, just open fire, oven at the side.
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Brian and Nora Boyd bought the house from Jack Coote in 1986, as a derelict cottage with a chimney full of a bees nest and hundreds of sparrrow’s nests in the thatched roof. Brian did the extension work himself.
