Home Sweet Home for my husband Martin growing up was a large three storey sandstone detached house in Hamilton, Lanarkshire. Formally it was called 'Linnholm'. It seems to have been built in the 1820s and its location can be seen on an Ordnance Survey map from 1858:
Martin's parents had initially set up home in Cambuslang, firstly in a single end tenement - one room, a kitchen and a hallway with an outside toilet and no hot water. Within five years they had had three children and needed more space. Fortunately they had started a successful business and could afford to move to a home with several bedrooms and a spacious back garden, still in Cambuslang. However four years later, in 1960, there were three more children so the parents looked again for an even bigger house.
The house in Hamilton that became the main family home had been spotted by his father, Jan, who thought it would be ideal. However, when she saw it, his mother Teresa was not impressed!! The house was falling to bits! Jan did manage to persuade her that it would be a good home and that it could be fully restored. The state of it was such that when Martin's godfather was repairing the roof, part of it caved in and he fell through each of the three floors below and ended up in the foundations!! His fall was cushioned as he fell through each floor so fortunately he was not injured.
Working relentlessly with friends and family, Jan not only managed to restore the house but also the two and a half acre garden that came with it. The cost of this venture was £1000 initially for the house and an estimated £1200 for all the repairs. Taking inflation into account, the total cost in today's terms would be £43,000 - a real bargain!
The back of the house and back garden
Over the next six years another four children were born, making a total of ten. The home became a perfect place for children, inside and outside. The children's friends were also made welcome to come and play in the big house and big back garden. Many of these children lived in homes similar to the first home the Stepek family had had - no indoor toilet, no bath. Martin's mum would sometimes put these friends into the bath there too which was a rare treat for them.
The children loved the house and the garden even more. There were many mature trees to climb and to pick fruit from. They played football, tig, hide and seek and 'Olympic Games' on the grass, staying out in the summer way past bedtime. Every summer there were berries to pick from the bushes Jan had planted. Inside the house, plenty toys and a table tennis table, endless books and comics. The fun never ended.
As the children grew up, they slowly moved away from the family home. The house became quieter and less busy but still a hub for all family members to catch up with each other. In the early 1980s Martin's parents decided to divide the bottom storey of the house and convert it into two flats. Two of Martin's siblings moved into them and the flats themselves too became a place for family to meet up. The parents themselves now only spent about six months of the year in Hamilton as they had purchased a second home in Florida. The house was therefore taken over for six months of the year by the younger children who at this point were now adults.
This remained the situation until the younger children moved away in the early 1990s. Fast forward ten years and Martin's father's health started to deteriorate, suffering strokes and declining mobility. Another decade passed and both parents died - October and November 2012, three weeks apart - after having lived in the house for 62 years. No family member sought to buy the house at this time and it was sold the following year. The family home was gone and with it the hub where so many met over the years on many an occasion.
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