33' "caravan" (house trailer) - Bostedale, Suffolk, UK - 1953

1953 b-w photo of our 33' house trailer in Bottesdale, Suffolk storage shed - fibre-cement product (tr)ash can church brick wall more brick wall kitchen window large main room window small main room window main bedroom window milk delivery stand wooden excuse for a door stoop

(image map - user cursor)

(1998 Snappy 3.0 capture with 8-mm camcorder from 127 negative on light box)

   This is a photo that I took.  It's obviously in leafless wintertime.  The 
outbuilding was used as a storage shed (after some of the shipped personal   
goods from the US had arrived and wouldn't all fit into the trailer!)  It was
made essentially from an asbestos-cement product and assembled from a kit.  A
knot in the wooden floor boards eventually became a portal for mice (finding 
the stored flower bulbs a delicacy).  It was left behind for the landlords,  
whose c. 18-year-old son used it as an art (oil painting) room with its nice 
south-facing window.                                                         

   The wooden structure against the trailer was for the milkman to place the 
delivered bottles, etc.  Over the closest wheel was my closet, which, in the 
damp UK climate, soon showed how well mildew would grow on things like shoes 
(and first introduced me to the earwig critters).  For the record, the small 
trailer's color is best described as something of a "pale, creamy yellow".   

   In the near background (this side of the wall) was the landlord's fruit   
garden (mostly berries).  The building in the background is a small church,  
which, unknown to us at first, had the typical tiny burial grounds on its    
site.                                                                        

Just this past summer while doing a periodic Web Search to see if anything new might be found on Botesdale I came across this Botesdale Methodist Church site which has a photo of that church. I contacted the minister, and he got in touch with a parishoner who lived in adjacent Rickinghall. He has since provided me with many photos, information, etc on what has transpired there in the past nearly-50 years! Most of the residents from "our time" there have, unfortunately, either moved on or passed on.


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Created: December 13, 2001
Updated: December 13, 2001