Free Up West by Pip Granger Page B

lived ‘below the offices’. Angela Rashbrook told me how, before the war, her parents were jointly employed as house managers in an office building near the Central Hall in Westminster. After he was demobbed, her father was reallocated to be house manager at Norfolk House in St James’s Square, and Angela moved in to the flat there in December 1945, when she was three. When her father died in 1969, she and her mother had to leave, as the flat was tied accommodation and went with the job.
    Andy Pullinger had a similar experience. ‘We moved to St James’s Square when I was still a baby: my father was a caretaker for Distillers Company Ltd at 21 St James’s Square.’ Andy enjoyed living in the heart of clubland: ‘I had a paper round for a newsagent in Crown Passage. The roundtook me all over the area from Green Park to Piccadilly, the Haymarket, St James’s Palace for the guards and the higher-ups near the Burlington Arcade and Old Bond Street. It was great at Christmas, as the tips were so good.’
    Anne Payne grew up in Knightsbridge. Her parents had split up when she was just a baby, and early in the war she and her mother went to live at 41 Montpelier Square, now one of the most prestigious addresses in London. In 2004, number 41 was sold for £3.2million, but during the war it was run as a lodging house, with a colourful collection of long-term residents. Anne’s maternal grandmother managed it for the owners, who had found somewhere less likely to be bombed to live in for the duration. Anne and her mother had their own small flat at the back on the ground floor, complete with the luxury of a bathroom. When her mother died she moved in with her grandmother.
    â€˜After the war,’ she told me, ‘my grandmother’s job ended when the house was either sold or reclaimed by the owner as a home – I’m not sure which. She got a job just two doors away, working as a housekeeper to Sir John Prestige – of Prestige Kitchens fame – in his London home.’ Anne and her grandmother lived at number 43, next to the King George IV public house, until 1957. Her grandmother’s job was not too onerous, as ‘Sir John only came up a couple of days a week.’ The dusting could be a chore, though. ‘One of his hobbies was collecting clocks; he had quite a few grandfather clocks. One, in his sitting room, was quite large, in a glass case. It had a sun and moon that moved around, and apparently therewere only two or three like it in the whole world. It’s quite strange to be in a large house like that, on your own with all these clocks ticking and chiming away.
    â€˜We had a small sitting room on the ground floor and two bedrooms out the back, with a private courtyard garden’ – Anne was the only West Ender I spoke to who grew up with a garden of her own – ‘and the run of the basement. There was a bathroom and toilet down there, and a huge kitchen, which had a double gas cooker, a fridge – the first one I’d ever seen – and one of those dumb waiters: you turned the handle to winch it up to Sir John’s sitting room. That was fun. There were several pantries off the kitchen, and a boiler room at the back.’ This luxurious house had been a draper’s shop until 1927, when Sir John ripped out the double shop-front and installed a front door with a fanlight above and a garage entrance.
    Large luxury flats could also be found in Bloomsbury. When the Jackson family was bombed out of their home in Shorts Gardens, by the Seven Dials, they were rehoused in Ridgmount Gardens, in an Edwardian mansion block: As Olga remembers, ‘They commandeered all these vacant accommodations to house people, and that’s how we got in. We stayed until 1966. The company wanted the flats back, so you either bought it, or they rehoused you. They were nice flats, quite selective.’
    Her brother Graham, who was born in