From toddler to teenager, I lived with my family lived at 19 Routh Road, a substantial six-bedroom Victorian semi-detached house backing onto Wandsworth Common. The front door, with its hammered glass panels, opened onto an imposing hall and stairway that reached over four flights to the top floor. This wooden oak chest sat at the bottom of the stairs, a taken-for-granted fixture in my young life, always there, never spoken of; I don’t remember it ever being opened or what was kept in it.
My mother used it as a place for decorative arrangements, often in the art deco glass vase – in spring, pussy willow; in autumn, copper beech twigs preserved with glycerine in the water; in winter, the seed heads of hydrangea. Sometimes, we would have a family excursion the bluebell woods of Surrey and come back with armfuls of flowers – unthinkable now – which would quickly wilt and be thrown out.
I have little knowledge of where the chest came from. I suspect its origins are on the Reason side of the family, as Nanna, grandma Whittlestone, was still living in No 1 Routh Road with all the furniture from my mother’s side of the family. Nor do I know anything of its history or value, but it stands for the Reason family heritage to me.
The chest was one of the few old pieces that Hilda and Ken took with them when they moved away from London in the 1970s. Ken later brought it with him when he came to live in Bath after my mother died, so my guess is it held some sentimental value him, for he was quite ruthless in throwing old stuff out. We acquired it when Ken died, placing it in our in the dining room with the linen tablecloths Elizabeth inherited from her mother inside.
We sit by the chest every day, resting our morning coffee mugs and afternoon tea cups on its surface. It is where we talk through the smaller and larger issues in our life together.
Ah, there's a parallel universe of oak chests in families. Our oak chest started out as the "glory box" holding the blankets and bedsheets that my mother had worked hard to purchase as a teenager, in preparation for marriage. And it was the family's blanket box for some 70 years. It stood in the large entry hallway of my childhood home: a reminder of how things started out for us, and the value of perseverance.
After Mum's death, the oak chest went to my brother. He repurposed it as a treasure chest, filled with photo albums and other extended-family memorabilia. Now it's with me.
Heirlooms help us weave our lives.