Going back to where you were raised

Went back a few years ago to see the house in a small market town where we lived with my grandmother and aunt. The old day nursery was turned into a sitting room and the night nursery became a small kitchen. We slept on the top floor. After my GM died we moved into the rest of the house, and later it was sold to the Abbeyfield society who turned it into an old people's home. Some years later it was sold again. The house is now in private hands and looks rather run down.

*Happysexegenariaan, what a lovely story.

Because my childhood homes were all demolished I thought my children would have a fondness for theirs but they don’t seem to have any emotional attachment to the place. I’d give anything to be able to see my old home again. My cousin still lives in the little terraced house that her parents lived in and I love that house because my dad used to take me there as a child. The tiny garden seemed huge to me back then and I still remember the bus ride that took us past Saltley gas works. And because we always went on a Sunday they always seemed to be cooking cabbage.

@Chestnut, interesting to compare the photos, it's the angle of the camera lens causing the discrepancy, cameras can't lie as such but can mislead, probably any estate agent's photos of houses prove that

Went back once to the flats where I was born in London, and they’ve all been bought, I could not afford to live there now. My cousin and I recently took my mum down memory lane to where she and my cousin lived in London. Mum says they were some of the best days of her life.

My parents moved from Scotland to London when I was small. I visited the house in Scotland when I was 21 and it did seem smaller than I remembered.
Since then I have only moved a few miles. My primary school is on a road I quite often go down and it is the same. A few years ago I went on a detour to walk down the road I lived on as a child and it looks the same, just a lot more cars.
I went to my secondary school last year on their Open Day as my DGD wants to go there. The building is the same, though it has a lot of extra outbuildings and I felt as if I was a teenager again being inside it.

In 1960 when I was 10 my GM (then 78) decided she wanted to make a final visit to Wales to see her eldest sister who was then in poor health, but also to show me her childhood home and where she had grown up. She felt if she left it any longer she may not be up to the trip.

So on a very very wet day we found ourselves standing outside a small two-up-two-down end of terrace cottage with me trying to take a photo of my mother and grandmother standing by the front door. A name plate by the door showed that the house still bore the Welsh name that my GM had chosen for it when she was six years old.

Suddenly the door was opened, the lady of the house looked out and asked if she could help us in any way. My mother (a little embarrassed at being caught) explained why we were there, and immediately we were invited in and offered a cup of tea and to look around the house if we wished. My GM was delighted, she went from room to room describing how they had been when she lived there. She was surprised how little the house had changed, apart from redecoration. The range was still there but no longer used, the scullery was now a proper kitchen and a downstairs bathroom and toilet had been added. The 2 bedrooms were still the same with open coal fires. The house didn't yet have central heating. I found it hard to imagine how a family of 12 had lived in such a small house.

The owner recognised my GM's surname and said the family were still remembered in the area. She was very interested to hear how my great-grandmother had made and sold sweets, biscuits and ice-cream to supplement their income, serving customers through the front window! My GM told her how her father had kept his horse and wagon (he was a coal merchant) on a patch of land next to the house that he rented from the railway. It had later been bought by the primary school and was now part of their playground.

A gloomy wet day had turned into a very interesting visit and my GM enjoyed the reminiscences. Before we left the owner took a few more photos for us and sent us on our way with a bag of welsh cakes. So kind.

Fast forward 30 years and I was selling an item online. When I saw the buyers address it was my grandmother's childhood home! It still had the same name! I sent a little note with the item explaining the co-incidence, and received a lovely reply with an invitation to visit at any time. We corresponded for a short while swapping notes and photos, but I never visited again. I Googled it once a few years ago and it still looks the same.

When my two daughters were young, I took them back to where my grandparents lived, and where I used spend my summer holiday with my parents and sister. They'd moved from East London during the war to a cottage in rural East Sussex. There was no electricity or sanitation, but it must have felt like paradise after the Blitz. The cottage was close to a windmill, wheatfields and a watermill. Anyway, years later, and the last time I was there, the cottage had been demolished and several "executive" houses had been built there. I have to admit to being quite upset!

I thought all 7 of the houses I lived in before I was 12 had long gone, so was surprised to find today that one is still there. It’s in a long terrace that still comprises the whole village - the little shops and post office are no more, but there’s still the old pub where we used to have our Sunday dinner because our kitchen facilities weren’t up to it. The little houses look quite cute now, many painted in pastel colours and I’m guessing the earth closets in the back yards are long gone. Sadly I can’t remember which number we lived at, but I think we’ll have a little detour there next time we visit my sister.

Unusually, there’s still green space where 3 of my old homes stood - they were just deemed unfit for modernisation but nothing replaced them. Another 2 (beautiful big old Victorian terraces) were demolished to make way for an industrial estate, and the last one for a Kingdom Hall.

We moved away from London when I was 4 as my parents hated the city and wanted a big garden. My sister was 2 when we moved to East Anglia so the house we moved to there - in an acre of land - was all she knew. It was an idyllic childhood, ruined by our Dad's decision to fulfill his life's dream and buy a boat and a smaller house. It really had a serious effect on my sister (another story)

I now live abroad.

She still lives in the area, and once took one of my sons back to the house to show him - they will never understand what it meant to us.

She said it had all been changed and built on and warned me never to go back and look.

Like an unfulfilled love affair it is better to cherish the memory rather than see how it turned out in reality.

i live about 15 miles from both places i grew up in, and quite often travel through one, where we lived with my maternal nan for 7 years. most of the area is pretty much the same except the shopping area is very run down and the school seems to be amongst many derelict properties. The area i moved to when i was 7 was not far from my nans, it was a newish housing estate with a great school which is long gone and the area is greatly changed and the flat we once lived in had a murder take place!

I would need to go on a long tour as I lived in 12 different flats, cottages and houses before I was 16, in 2 different towns. So many different primary schools I lost count but only 1 senior school.

I was brought up in Southall till I was 10. It's many years since I went back, but I imagine our house will still be there. There was a lot of land behind it that was used for allotments so I think that will have been built on. You didn't have to go very far to reach farmland that stretched almost to Heathrow (or London airport as it was then) We used to go to the airport to watch the planes taking off on Sundays and there were pony rides! School was five minutes walk away and, strange as it sounds now, there were only four Indian children at our school. Immigration from India was only just getting underway. When I was 10 we had to move to Acton to live with my grandmother,which I hated. It wasn't till I was a teenager that I realised the advantage of only being a 20 minute tube ride from the West End.

Eight years ago I moved to within 15 miles of the village where I grew up and went to school. I have visited it a few times now. My house looks unchanged outside, but I once saw it for sale online and it is completely different inside. Much of the old village is unchanged but all the little old shops have gone and , lime everywhere else, there are now too many hair dressers, estate agents and nail parlours. I don't know anyone there, but I do enjoy looking at the facebook page of memories, with lots of old photos and reminisces and have found people I used to know.

I believe until I was 3 I lived in an end terrace House in Chester, I did find the house about 30 years ago. I also found the house we moved to from when I was 3 until I was nearly 6, when we moved to Scotland. My husband an myself regularly visited my neighbour - she died 2 years ago. I did visit the town just before lockdown, a nice coastal town with an airport.
There are no hotels left in the town, a pity. I would love to stay there for a few days

I go back to the place I was born in about once a year. I still have friends in the road and through them have got to know the people who live in my childhood house. They have been fascinated by copies of photos of it from the 60s and 70s and I have loved seeing the house updated and cherished.

My school seems smaller than I remember, as does the local park. The row of shops which used to be of the "butcher, baker, candlestick maker" type are now takeaways, barbers and estate agents which is a shame.

hollysteers

I don’t go back and the inner city area has been raized to the ground.
No happy memories for me apart from the freedom of the streets with gangs of kids who played on bomb sites.

Same here. I envy people that can still see the area where they grew up.I see old photos of the place and try to remember what it was like to live there.

Funnily enough we have just returned from a stay in the house my parents retired to! I did not live there, but was married from there, and when browsing Airbnb recently I recognised it. As my daughter was coming over from Australia for a visit she suggested we rent it for a few days to show her children, and rekindle her happy memories. I was a bit worried that it would make me sad without them being there, but I loved it, it felt so familiar! It is on the seafront in a rather quaint old fashioned seaside town. We all had a relaxing break there and I would not hesitate to go again.

I often go back to the village I grew up in as it’s only 15 miles away. The house is now flats but the fields and woods are the same and that’s what I go for.

I last went back to where I grew up over 40 years ago, the place had shrunk! The streets narrower, the steep hills mere bumps! I'd love to go back to reminisce but I'm over 500 hundred miles away in the Scottish Highlands.. maybe one day.

We lived in a little cul-de-sac council house when I was growing up. We were very happy, we played in the quiet road, hardly any cars in those days. I recently went back to have a look, still the same except entirely choc-a-block with cars. Sadly nowhere for children to play now.

I consider myself lucky enough to have spent my childhood in 3 different counties and over six years abroad. As I get older I think a lot of those times, and have taken (dragged) my husband to each house I lived in, and even checked them out on Rightmove. My younger sister and I have spent evenings with a glass of wine talking about how lucky we were.

I lived in Scotland until I was 14. I have been back to have a look at the street which I remember as well kept with lovely gardens. Most people grew fruit and veg in the back. Children had concerts in the gardens with a sheet pegged on the washing line for the stage curtain. We cycled to woodlands for picnics. My visit was awful. The place was really rundown. The little parade of shops had nothing but steel shutters on windows. Gardens, what gardens? These were all beautiful houses, built just after the war but now gone to wreck and ruin. The primary school was set on fire by vandals, had to be a complete new build. So, so sad. Just glad my parents aren't here to see how their beloved home has deteriorated.

I recently posted about returning to the state where I was born and raised and lived my entire life after moving across country nine months ago. Of course, nothing really changed in that short of a time but I found the experience very unsettling emotionally. My DH died almost two years ago and his death is one thing that factored into my decision to leave. As I traveled around to see friends and family, which was the sole purpose of my visit, I was bombarded with memories - many were lovely, of course, but almost all involved people who have passed away and were thus bittersweet. Adding to the experience was my contracting COVID and having to delay my trip to what is now what I completely consider my home. Some very helpful folks on this site offered two quotes
that I have engraved in my brain and posted on my walls: No man ever steps in the same river twice, for it’s not the same river and he’s not the same man (Heraclitus) and The past is a foreign country: they do things differently there (L.P. Hartley). While I’d like to see folks back there again, I won’t be returning.

Family still lives in the town I last lived in before I married, so I go back there often - it's not a lot changed, although the railway is no longer there and the station area is now a small private housing estate. However, my husband and I returned to Singapore (where we were married) to celebrate our Silver Wedding in 1992 and that had changed almost beyond recognition. And when I see it on TV now, I realised it has changed greatly again between 1992 and now. But on the day if our anniversary we hired a taxi to take us to all the places we remembered and believe it or not we found our first home together, unaltered! It was the most wonderful thing to find and remains a treasured memory.