Following our unusual honeymoon, we returned to the house in Vicarage Wood, which had
already received some attention from Avril, who did not appreciate some of the with it attempts at
decoration previously made by June and I. For example, the wallpaper in the lounge, covered
by hundreds of bulls and toreadors with red cloaks, had to go - along with the red paint on the
skirting boards! Also, the room divider, the base of which had been made by me from cheap
pine boards covered with wood-effect Fablon - which was starting to peel - and the rope lattice
between it and the ceiling, was declared redundant. One day I came home to find Avril tearing
the wallpaper off the hall stair walls, as she had decided that this also was not suitable. Over the
ensuing years I learned a lot about taste and design from Avril, but these early lessons were
rather a shock.
Another dismissal from our love nest was the pianola that I had purchased from one of my
colleagues at Marconi. I loved this instrument, playing rolls such as The Mastersingers of
Nuremberg and the William Tell overture although I had to pedal furiously as the pump system
and internal pipes were very leaky. To make life easier, after realising that the pianola worked on
vacuum rather than air pressure, I connected it to our Hoover Constellation vacuum cleaner to
provide the necessary suck. Because of the noise made by the Hoover, I tucked it away under
the hall stairs, covered in coats from the adjacent rack to muffle the row. To connect them
together I obtained a long fat black plastic pipe, which snaked from the hall, across the floor of
the lounge, to the pianola - accompanied by an electrical extension cable for power control - also
black! This arrangement met with disapproval from Avril on many levels, including the fact that
a pianola is much larger than a normal piano so it took up a lot of our lounge space, and after a
rather short programme of concerts, the instrument had to go!
The houses in the Vicarage Wood area were built using the No Fines method, famously used by
George Wimpey & Co. from the 1940s to address post-war housing shortages, which utilized in-
situ cast concrete made without fine aggregate (sand). Consisting only of cement, water, and
coarse aggregate (10-20mm), this created a porous, lightweight structure that was fast to build,
but did have disadvantages, including poor thermal insulation. Our house was the third in a
block of four, with a ground-level passageway between us and the second. Unfortunately, above
the passageway, where the main bedrooms adjoined, there were joins between the pre-cast
building blocks, and the one in our bedroom had opened up so that one could peer out across
the front lawn through the gap. This meant that the house could be cold and dampish in winter,
and therefore declared by Avril to not be a suitable place into which to bring a baby, so we
needed somewhere better.
It had become obvious very soon after our honeymoon that Avril was suffering with the morning
sickness associated with pregnancy, and this was soon confirmed by our doctor - the excellent
Dr. Hamilton from the Bush Fair surgery. Her condition was rather a surprise to us as because
due to the bungled room arrangements, although we had stopped taking precautions at the start
of our honeymoon, we had only slept together on that first night at our stopover in France, and
Avril insisted that the morning sickness had started before we stayed in France on the way
home. As the resultant birth took place in the following March, well under nine months later, it
seems that we were an extremely fertile pair! This proved to be confirmed two years later by
our second child arriving only eight months after the second time we stopped taking precautions.
A discussion about somewhere better took place one Friday evening, where Avril raised the
possibility of buying instead of renting. I must say it took me a while to agree to the concept, but
as I was earning quite a good salary at the time I could not raise many counter arguments, and
agreed to begin tentative house hunting on the morrow - starting in nearby Roydon which Avril
favoured. On the way to Roydon on the Saturday morning, as we reached the Town Centre I
suggested that we visit the Harlow Corporation offices, as they offered houses for sale as well as
those for rent. We were offered viewings at three sites: The Maples, Old Harlow, and by the
Sports Centre. The buildings at the last of these were on three floors, and at the second the
area between the adjacent garage and front door looked impossible to navigate with a pram or
pushchair, so both of these were dismissed outright. Those at The Maples were another matter
altogether!
In 1963 a British housing mission visited Canada to study timber balloon-frame building
methods. To alleviate a persistent housing shortage the British government wanted to expand
and modernize the house-building industry with the aim of being able to complete 500,000 new
dwelling units annually by 1970. The Canadian government wanted to get a piece of this market
for its exports of CLS (Canadian Lumber Standards-sized) lumber and Douglas fir plywood. The
British mission found that Canadian methods were highly efficient in terms of cost, on-site labour
and value for money and decided that a pilot project should be developed in the UK. The 173
houses in The Maples, tucked into the far south-west corner of Harlow are the result. The unique
feature of this estate is not its density – at 12 houses per acre it is a far cry from the 20 dwellings
per acre in Bishopsfield – but the fact that these are houses with all the features typical of those
in any Canadian city. They have gyprock walls hung on load-bearing wooden stud walls, which
allowed for the installation of rock wool insulation in both the walls and ceiling. They also have
gas-fired forced-air central heating and hot water supply, insulated walls and roofs, heated
bathrooms and built-in wardrobes. Eighty-two of them have attached garages. The exterior finish
consists of some Western Red Cedar clapboard, which is not so very different from traditional
Essex weatherboarding (although that is most commonly used on barns), and brick veneer, so
that in appearance they are similar to traditional English house designs. The residents have
always been very happy with the houses that are much less expensive to heat than more
traditional masonry houses. But they were all built for sale, and were not well received by
lenders. In the beginning none of the Building Societies would take a mortgage on them because
they were considered a bad risk and the Development Corporation had to provide the financing.
When Avril and I looked round the show house at The Maples, we were amazed by what we
were told and what we saw. With my engineering background I was impressed by the
technicalities of the building, and Avril loved the design and its potentialities. We went back to
the site on the Sunday morning to look around the buildings under construction, and picked out
the one that we liked the most at the rear of the site - which was one of those nearly ready for
occupation. As soon as the Corporation offices opened on Monday morning, I was there to pay
my fifty-pound holding deposit for No 68. I am well-known as someone who likes things to
happen quickly, but I think 60 hours between a tentative discussion and house-buying action
must be a lifetime record. I invited my parents to come and see the Maples show house, mainly
to seek Dad's advice as to whether it was a wise move to get a mortgage to buy number 68, and
he was very supportive. At the time, mortgage rates were running at around 6.25% variable, but
the Corporation financing was at 7.625% fixed. I liked the idea of the fixed rate and chose that,
although my friends thought I was mad at the time. Before I left number 68, mortgage rates had
risen to around 13%, so I accidentally did the right thing!