HOME TRUTHS

This month JP Knight is launching a brand new feature in which a well-known local personality will be sharing their memories of their childhood home, the first home they owned and their dream home. 

Bernard Stone, 71, who was Mayor of Wallingford from 2010 to 2011 and again from 2013 to 2014, lives in Winterbrook with his wife Barbara, and he reveals how he built his first home.

Memories of my childhood home: I was very fortunate to be brought up in a five bedroom detached house in Headington built by my grandfather, a local builder. I was born in 1943 and by the time I was about seven my brother and sister, who were much older than me, had moved out so my mother let three of the bedrooms to Oxford University students. It was a household full of bustle and activity and I have particular memories of one of those students, Tom Bourdillon, who was a member of the 1953 Mount Everest Expedition which made the first ascent of Everest, sitting on the front door step cleaning his climbing gear. They were good times. We grew most of our own fruit and vegetables and kept chickens ensuring a good supply of fresh eggs.

First Home: With the benefit of all the technical skills I learnt at Cheney Technical School I helped my father build a house for my parents retirement following which, in the mid 1960s, I embarked on building my first home as a married man in the village of Marsh Baldon. I bought two almost derelict attached cottages on about a quarter of an acre of land for £1,800 in 1967 and renovated and extended them to create one larger property.

Moving to Wallingford: In 1977, to be nearer to where I worked in Reading and with good primary schooling for my two children, I bought 50 High Street. It had been built in 1933 for the town doctor and had a waiting room and consulting room. It had become very neglected over many years and was in a sorry state when I bought it. Over the course of several years I renovated and extended it and it proved to be a great family home in an excellent location.

Six years ago, with a wish to ease back on DIY in maintaining an older property, I sold the house and purchased a much more modern house still in the very desirable Wallingford.

My dream house has changed over the years according to the stage in life I and my family had reached. I believe a house is just a ‘pile of bricks and mortar’, an asset you can swap and you should not get too emotionally attached. For the best quality of life you have to be prepared to change so, looking ahead, I guess at some point my dream home will emerge as a smaller property, such as those in St Lucian’s, close to the town centre and with maintenance worries taken care of. That’s for the future and currently Barbara and I are content and have the space to accommodate visiting children and grandchildren.