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Ron Levett, born in Alfriston, East Sussex, enlisted in 1943, and whilst posted to the British Liberation Army, took part in the liberation of Germany. He then returned to England, setting up his own electronics business and developing an interest in the new entertainment of the time - television.
Uncle Jesse, who owned the house that I lived in, died and the house was left in trust for Aunt Jinny for her lifetime. There was no one at home to look after her because she was now confined to bed. She went into a home near St. Mary's Hospital in Old Town. I borrowed the van and went in to see her but I don't think she knew me.
Later in the year she died and the house became my property. I received the deeds and found that it had been built in 1763, during the reign of George III. There are a number of Georgian houses in Alfriston around this date.
Now I owned the house I could start bringing the place up to date. I took out a small mortgage with the Ancient Order of Foresters Friendly Society, which I had joined on leaving the army.
David Pettitt wanted to start up as a builder and needed the work so I took him on. The main drainage was in the process of being installed in the village at the time and connection was free at the time, so the sooner we converted the bathroom the better.
The first thing we did was to install a new bathroom in the small room by the back door and I bought a suite second hand at a breakers yard, plus one extra toilet.
I tiled the walls up to waist level, David cemented over the floor and I laid Vinolay to cover it and the first room was complete. When we came to strip out the old bathroom we found that it was quite impossible to carry the cast iron bath down so we smashed it up with a sledgehammer and carried it out in pieces.
David knew a drainage expert, so I employed him to dig up the back yard, install the drains and connect us up to the main drain out in the road. We then converted the small room directly ahead at the top of the stairs as a second toilet.
When we started on the sitting room that Uncle Jessie had been using we found the floor was in bad condition and when we took up some boards, found that instead of floor joints, there was just a line of dust where the joints had been.
The dividing wall between the living room and the kitchen was made of lathe and plaster and were riddled with woodworm so I decided to remove the wall completely. While the floor was exposed I also decided to install electric under-floor heating.
The front wall was very damp, as there was no damp-proof course or cavity wall. I found a material, which consisted of strips of steel encased in a coating of a pitch-like material. This was nailed to the wall, and then the wall was re-plastered. It seemed to work very well.
The first morning after the new concrete sub-floor was laid in the living room, I looked in to see if it had set. Lying in the middle of the floor was a huge rat, stone dead.
Now that the wall had been removed, the rat had come in during the night as usual and found he had no-where to hide. Our cat got him at last. The place was alive with rats, which came over from the next-door butcher's shop.
The wall of the living room on the left of the front door was also riddled with woodworm, so we removed it entirely and replaced it with a breezeblock wall.
I found that rats were still coming in and traced their entrance to the point where the mains cable entered the house via the cellar. I filled in the hole with sand and cement, but the next morning, found they had scratched it out before it could set. The new time I mixed broken glass with the cement. That stopped them!
I rewired the whole of the house. Parts of the house had never been wired, including the attic and attic stairs. These now had lighting.
The back of the house had had an old chimney removed, leaving a blackened scar in its place. I got David to render over the whole of the back with sand and cement, and then we painted it white with waterproof paint. At the front and sides the house needed re-pointing. David suggested using black cement and it turned out very well.
The back gable of the roof was in a poor state, so David and I hired some scaffolding from a firm in Brighton. We stripped off the old tiles and battens, felted over the joists, then re-laid all the tiles and then we had to refit the hip tiles. This is easier said than done.
We did eventually get them to lie in a reasonably straight line, but to this day they are still a bit crooked. All in all, I think for the small amount it cost, we did a reasonable job on the house, but obviously it needed a great deal more spent on it. It would have to wait, however, until I had made more money.
A Doctor Thomas had bought a plot of land near Sloe Lane and had commissioned an architect to draw up plans for a cottage. He asked us to price for wiring the building.
The plane were very detailed and Dr. Thomas knew exactly where every piece of furniture and hence, where every power point should go. He agreed our estimate and work started. As far as we were concerned, everything went fine but one morning Dr. Thomas, the architect and the carpenter were on site.
The carpenter pointed out that a cupboard, which was part of the bedroom, was extended over the stairwell, and anyone climbing the stairs would hit their head on the bottom of the cupboard.
After a long discussion the architect gave it up as a bad job, after experimenting with breezeblocks to simulate where the stairs would be when they were installed. He said to the carpenter 'Well, I expect you can work it out, can't you?'
I don't know how he managed it but it worked when he was finished.
Ron Levett, 2001
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