The following is an extract from the fascinating life of Sydney Partridge, who, apart from being born in London, spent the major part of his formative years on one of Britain's most popular holiday islands.
   
'I was born on 30/8/22 in my grandmother's house in Wightman Road, Haringay, London, N4, where my parents were then living. My mother and father had met as Post Office employees (counter clerks and telegraphists) at P.O. Headquarters in Central London and had married in October 1918 (at the end of the Great War). Their first son, my brother Eric, was born in April 1920.

In late 1922, about 2 months after my birth, we all moved to Broadstairs, Kent, because my parents didn't want to bring us up in a city environment. About 2 years later, a vacancy arose at Ventnor Head Post Office, on the Isle of Wight, and so we moved there in 1924/25.

Ventnor is a small seaside town (population about 3500 then), built on the lower slopes below the 800 ft. high St. Boniface Down, which is the tallest hill within a mile of the sea along the whole of the South Coast of England.

We lived in rented rooms at the level of the main shopping street for 2 or 3 years, and then the Council built some more modern houses on a road extending inland between 'the Downs', about 400 ft above sea level.

These houses were more up to date than the rest of the town and they even had a bathroom/W.C. (water closet). This was a dreamed of luxury in the days of a tin bath in the kitchen, filled by hand with warm water from the kitchen 'copper' (which was heated by a wood and coal fire underneath).

Our kitchen had a concrete floor and its equipment included a 'butler-sink' made of earthenware, a gas stove, and a mangle (5 ft high, with 2 thick wooden rollers, turned by a huge cast iron wheel with a wooden handle).

The living room had a large 'Kitchener', a cast-iron stove, black-leaded with an oven beside the firebox. This also gave heat into the room as well as heating the iron top-plate, which was the full width of the stove (about 4 ft). The round metal 'plates' could easily be removed so that a saucepan or a kettle could be put on the 'holes' to be heated by the fire underneath.
There was a sliding metal 'damper' to control the amount of draught going up the round metal chimney and thence up the brick chimney.

The rest of the house could be warmed by a coal fireplace in every room, including all the 3 bedrooms upstairs, except the bathroom/W.C. which had a gas heated 'geyser' for supplying hot water to the bath.

There was no washbasin in the bathroom/W.C. or elsewhere in the house. Each bedroom had its own washstand with an earthenware bowl and water jug and an enamel bucket into which one tipped the water after washing.

There was a second WC at ground level, in a brick-built extension outside the kitchen door. We never used it because the door had a gap of about 3 inches at top and bottom (as is usual for 'outside loos', such as in school playgrounds) and it was too draughty for comfort!

The house was unusually favoured in having both gas and electricity, but the latter was only a 5 amp lighting circuit with no power points. What electrical gadgets one had in those days were run from an 'adapter', plugged into the light bulb socket in the ceiling.

For most of the years before 1939 (the start of World War 2) few people had electrical gadgets - not even an electric iron. We used to have a heavy cast-iron (hence the name 'iron') that was heated by placing it on one of the gas rings on the kitchen stove. It got very hot, of course, and one had to hold the handle with a piece of felt. The ironing was done on top of a number of blankets laid on top of the kitchen table ('ironing boards' came later, after the War).

We were one of the first families in our neighbourhood to have a wireless set run 'off the mains' (as opposed to the use of large batteries (accumulators) which had to be carried to an electrical shop for re-charging). The wireless set was run by 'valves' (i.e. 25 years before transistors were invented), which took several minutes to 'warm up' after the set was switched on. Ours was a 5-valve set - one could be proud of the number of valves - and it had to have a high aerial - on a pole as high as the house. In the 'early thirties' wireless sets were sufficiently rare that one asked friends to come round if they wanted to listen to the radio commentary on the Boat Race or the Cup Final.'

How different it is today in the television age of ample sports coverage in live moving pictures of glorious technicolour, being received on a digital dish from a far off satellite.