CONTENTS:

Introduction | In the Beginning... | Fleetwood | Cleethorpes | Wilson Street Days  
Elliston Street Secondary Modern School | A Pop Career? | Marjorie Elizabeth Robinson | Our First House

First House

By the late 60s Marje and I had decided to get married and set the wedding date for 4th April 1970. We bought a small terraced house in Glebe Road, Cleethorpes, behind St. Peters Church and set to renovating it. Our building society mortgage offer required certain work to be done as part of the mortgage so we had to install a new damp course treatment at the front of the house and I set to renewing the wooden floors. Marje was a 'dab hand' at decorating and was a great labourer and an excellent decorator so between us we gradually got the house ready for married life.

Our House in 2003 (with white car outside)

When we first moved in, we only had a small number of 13 amp sockets downstairs in the whole house so we had to make do with extension leads to supply anything electrical upstairs such as the electric blanket (essential for those pre-central heating winters!). We had gas fires installed in the front and middle lounges which made a significant difference as we could heat the house quite quickly without having to bother with lighting coal fires. After a while we decided that it would be worth re-wiring the whole house so I set to and renewed all the lighting and 13 amp circuits. We had the old bay window taken out and replaced with a smaller one and had all the old Edwardian sliding sash windows replaced too.  

After we'd lived in Glebe Road for 3 years we decided to put the house on the market and buy some land to build our own detached house. Other houses in the street were up for sale at the same time so we cheekily erected our own "For Sale" notice which of course was seen by everyone calling to look at the other houses. In next to no time we got buyers, 2 young teachers, and sold the house. We had not started our self-build project at that time so Marje's Mum and Dad said we could go and live with them while we did the building work. In the event we lived with Betty and Bill for about a year and my brother Frank stored our surplus furniture.

I see that the subsequent owners have kept the house in good condition and I guess it's worth around £70,000 or so in 2005.