Dawn Cottage

Research by Joan West

On 14th October 1919 Wilfred Warren of Dawn Cottage purchased Lily Bottom Farm for £1,100 from Harold Edward Carter. click Harold Edward & Eliza Carter for more about Harold Carter.

1st December 1961. Conveyance of Dawn Cottage, Turnip End part of land together with a cottage known as Dawn Cottage between William Lacey and P W Goffin.

Hallmark April 1988. Planning Application for two storey side extension and single storey rear extension at Dawn Cottage, Darvills Hill

Dawn Cottage at Turnip End by Sandra Jenkins

About 1946 Dawn Cottage was lived in by Margaret and Peter Goffin.   At that time Peter was well known as a set and costume designer for the D’Oily Carte Opera Company.   He was often in London all week.   Presumably they had no car as they relied on buses or people giving them lifts.   The cottage had a water tank in the garden where they hung the butter and milk which they bought from the Parslows Farm at Flowers Bottom in order to keep it cool.   The privy was outside and there was no bathroom for many years.

Christabel Goffin, now Christabel Grimmer, recalls Life in Dawn Cottage,Turnip End for Speen magazine.

MY CHILDHOOD HOME. Before I married Mike Grimmer (who I met in The Plough in 1957 when he was working at Bomber Command) my name was Christabel Goffin.   I was born in 1937, and I lived all my childhood at Turnip End.    My father was Peter Goffin, my mother was Margaret.   click Peter and Margaret Goffin. My sister Lucy was born in that terrible winter of 1947 in the Shrubbery nursing home on the West Wycombe Road.

NO CAR. Arch Janes was always ferrying us about (we didn’t have a car) to Wycombe station if the bus didn’t run, when we were off on a summer holiday with too much luggage to carry, and I am sure he brought my mother and baby sister back from the nursing home in that terrible winter.   I was ten and well remember the snow was so deep at Turnip End that mother was unable to come home for some time.

1947 WINTER. My father was a Theatre Designer and often had to stay in London during the week.   When mother was stuck in the nursing home I stayed with the Cheshire family who lived behind Rose Ellis’s pub (they had a chicken farm).  I went to school with Bella and Susan Cheshire.   I remember when my father came to collect me, we struggled through the snow from Speen to Turnip End and then had to dig our way through the snow to find our front door!   It certainly was a never to be forgotten winter.

LIFE IN THE HOUSE. As for Calor gas, outside toilet and a well (tank), we had all three and I was well into my teens before we had the luxury of a proper bathroom.   It was the tin bath in front of the copper fire for many years.   My little sister had her bath IN the copper, but of course only when the fire was well and truly out.    In hot weather mother used to hang a bucket down the tank to keep the butter and milk (from Parslow’s Farm) nice and cool….. once or twice we lost the lot when the string came undone.