Bucklebury

Bucklebury, Reading, West Berkshire http://m.google.co.uk/u/m/zuFcxW

In memoriam of Eileen Hughes

The memory of a loving wife and mother Eileen Hughes is remembered as a loving wife and mother. She was known for her empathy and for her care for others. For her energy and courage. She would brought up a council house and with many brothers and sisters and also one real sister. When I first met her she was living in a boarding house as her parents had parted. Her father and had moved out of the house. Later her parents got together again to live in a tiny caravan with a young baby (Her only real Brother) but they were constantly quarrelling, parting and coming together once again. Homelessness was not unknown to Eileen Tack. (Her maiden name). Having met at work and becoming engaged, came the time when we needed to find accommodation. My father was buying his own house and it was natural to me to do something similar. There was a shortage of houses in Oxford a mortgage was out of my reach. No doubt because of Eileen’s experience above she insisted that we wait to get married until we had found a house to live in.: This took several years . Before you could buy a house it was necessary to obtain a building licence. When the licence was allocated to a semi detached house built by a local builder. I then attempted to get a mortgage. I tried several building societies and in each case was refused because my wages were insufficient. It became obvious that we would need to earn extra money as indeed we each did. And at weekends I undertook such things as fencing, hedging and drainage work. We saw an advert in the local paper for a wooden property for a price that we could almost afford. It turned out to be uninhabitable. The land however offered the prospect of building a house. The estate agent suggested that we share the cost with someone else and split the land in half. When we paid our share we had very little money left. Both Eileen and I continued to save and work at weekends. It became obvious that employing a builder, using a mortgage, we believed that jt would leave very little for everyday living. I approached an architect to design a chalet bungalow and then realised that it was again too expensive.t And so it was that I decided to draw my own plans and supervise the building of the house. I was successful in obtaining planning permission for a chalet bungalow and I then went ahead employing craftsmen including bricklayers, a carpenter and electrician. I did my own plumbing. What I did yhen will now be called “project manager!”. Eileen’s determination together with my own and the extra work that we took on to save enough money saw u

s through and we were able to reap the benefits there to the full.