It was while visiting a museum near Preston that Titch and Billy had the brainwave. Laura and Billy had invited Titch and his wife Elaine plus their two grandchildren on a day out to Ribchester. They’d spent the first part of the morning looking at the Roman fort built about AD 78. Titch and Billy had became engrossed in the history of the site but the kids, and the ladies, had been bored to tears by the whole thing, and so they’d moved across the street to the building which was the main purpose of their visit to the town, the Museum of Childhood. For the young ones, the place was a delight, a dream come true, for it was packed with every imaginable toy and game from all over the world, ranging from dolls and teddy bears to train sets and tricycles. But what eclipsed everything and captured the imagination of them all was Queen Mary’s doll’s house which was on loan from Windsor Castle. No two ways about it; it was a masterpiece and fit for a queen. It had been designed by Sir Edwin Lutyens and presented to Queen Mary in 1924 when she was fifty-seven years of age and so it was more a display thing than a kid’s plaything. They certainly weren’t allowed to touch any part of it and even photography was forbidden.
It was built precisely to the scale of one-twelfth and every
detail of the furniture and fittings from the wrought-iron entry gates in the garden to the chandeliers in the bedrooms was exact. What’s more, the equipment - the water system, electric lighting, and elevators, even the tiny gramophone worked. The wine bottles in the cellar contained genuine vintage wines and there were more than two hundred miniature volumes of books by famous authors - some in their own hand: Kipling, Chesterton, Conan Doyle, Hardy and Barrie. In addition, the furniture had been built by the leading craftsmen of the day and the paintings were commissioned from well-known artists. Once finished, the doll’s house was put on show at the British Empire Exhibition of that year and also at the Ideal Home Exhibition in 1925. Having once dabbled in his spare time in wood-turning and building doll’s houses, Billy was mesmerized and could only gaze in awe and wonderment at the artistic genius of the workmanship that had gone into its creation. His own efforts had been amateurish and dilettante but he could recognize creative genius when he saw it.
‘You know,’ he said toTitch,‘I’d give my right arm to build something even a fraction as beautiful as this.’
‘That might be difficult,’ Titch grinned, ‘trying to build something like this with only one arm but I take your point. If you ever decide to have a shot at it, include me in.’
‘I know that look,’ Laura said, gazing at Billy pointedly. ‘I hope this exhibition is not giving you ideas.’
‘Not entirely,’ he replied, ‘but if Titch and I worked together, we could produce some fine works of art, maybe not as good as this, but on a more modest scale perhaps. And our models wouldn’t be merely for show but for children to play with. I still have the woodworking tools and equipment languishing in the cellar at home. Maybe the two of us could form a partnership and go into business together. Now that my private tutoring has more or less fizzled out, something like this might be the answer.’
‘I wouldn’t want to go through all that again,’ Laura countered. ‘And, if my memory serves me right, there was never any money in it.’
‘Then it was just a hobby done in my spare time. This would be different.We’d run it on strict commercial principles. Work out costs, find the right market, and make it pay.’
‘I remember the noise and the mess,’ she said.
‘I’m sure we can overcome that problem,’ he replied.
To Billy’s surprise, Elaine became enthusiastic about the idea.
‘Building doll’s houses could be a worthwhile occupation if they could find the right outlets,’ she said. Elaine had long been looking for something that would take Titch out from under her feet.
Laura wasn’t convinced. In so many ways, Billy told himself, I’m lucky to have someone like Laura as my wife. If we’d been a car, I’d have been the accelerator and she’d have been the brake. A good analogy perhaps, he reflected, but a car needs fuel, that is money, if it’s going to move forward. At that moment, however, it was the brake doing the talking.
‘Where would you work and exactly where would you sell them?’ she said doubtfully.‘I seem to remember that you could only move them at Christmas time. That wouldn’t be of much use. What we need is a steady regular income. That’s common sense.’
But Billy wasn’t in the mood for common sense. The more he thought about this new idea of working with Titch, the more attractive it seemed and he wasn t to be put off by Laura s logical arguments.
‘We could work in my workshop basement and maybe install a dust extraction system,’ he said. ‘As for outlets, we could try the craft fairs. They are held on a regular basis in various parts of the north-west and there’s usually one being held somewhere every week. We could start by building small, simple houses and then as we get better, make bigger models.’
‘Later, we could build miniature furniture and install lighting systems,’ Titch added, becoming more and more excited.‘Let’s go for it. I’m willing to put some capital into the enterprise. With Billy’s manual skills and my brains, we can’t miss; we’re bound to go far.’
‘How about Timbuktu?’ Laura suggested.
On the drive home, Titch could talk about nothing else. He prattled on ah the way back to Manchester.
‘This could be the beginning of a large international company, Smalley and Hopkins,’ he proclaimed.
‘Don’t you mean Hopkins and Smalley? Alphabetical order is the usual way of establishing a company name.’
‘Why not think big?’ Titch suggested. ‘Best not to put ah your eggs in one basket like doh’s houses. Let’s broaden the concept and include your other skills like wood-turning and wine-making?’
‘Oh, no!’ Laura sighed at the back of the car. ‘Do you two learn nothing from history?’
‘According to Henry Ford, history is bunk,’Titch said.
‘Those who do not learn from history are destined to repeat their mistakes,’ Laura countered.
It was no use. Titch and Billy were on a roll, and there was no stopping them. That’s how their little concern, Country Crafts, was born.
For the first few weekends,Titch joined Billy in his basement, checking out the equipment. He puhed out the wood-turning tools from the back of the dummy cellar where they had lain for over three years. They’d become caked in dust and rust but they were all there still: the lathe, the gouges, the chisels, the chucks. Billy had almost forgotten what many of them were for. He gave Titch a Cook’s tour of the parts and the need for safety precautions and they worked late into the evening cleaning up and lubricating everything.
‘What’s a chuck and what’s it for?’ he asked.
Billy explained patiently that a chuck was a metal faceplate usually screwed onto the wood in order to mount the work on the lathe.
Next Billy taught him the basics of doll’s house construction though his own skills were limited in that respect as he’d never produced anything ambitious in his early efforts.
Undoubtedly the biggest cleaning job concerned the winemaking accessories, especially the jars and the demijohns, all of which needed swilling out and sterilizing. Most of the funnels or gurglers had to be discarded as they were beyond saving. Together they made a close study of C.J. Berry’s Wine-making for Beginners.
‘We are going to make a fortune,’Titch enthused.‘I only wish I’d taken up these hobbies earlier in life. I’d probably be a millionaire by now.’
Upstairs, Laura was still concerned about the clouds of sawdust that would be blowing into their lungs and throughout the house.
‘I remember all this from years ago,’ she said. ‘Up above, the whole house was shaking, with books and ornaments falling off shelves. We had the impression you were building Noah’s Ark down there. Not only that, there was a layer of fine dust on everything and it was a constant battle to keep the place clean.’
‘No need to worry this time, Laura,’ Billy assured her.‘Titch and I have ordered state-of-the-art respirators and a vacuum dust extractor. So there should be no problem.’
Titch was a quick learner and after three months they were up and running.
They had twenty gallons of the most delicious fruit wines fermenting: elderberry, peach, apricot, apple, gooseberry, rhubarb, and even carrot.
‘This will be ready in another three months,’ Billy told Titch. ‘It’s illegal to sell it but there’s nothing to stop us offering it to
customers at the craft fairs as a bonus for buying our other products.’
On the woodcraft side of the enterprise, they had honed their tools and their skills. The only thing they needed now was wood in order to go into production.The hardwoods were expensive to buy new at the timber merchants and they looked round for alternative sources. Billy fell back on his old remedy when he’d been searching for bargains. The auction. And it didn’t take them long to find one.
It was to be held just outside Bury and involved the sale of a complete carpentry and joinery business specializing in fitting out pubs and clubs. It seemed that the previous owner, a fifty-year-old Lothario, had run off to South America with his twenty-year-old secretary, leaving behind a wife and three grown-up sons. The enterprise, its tools, equipment and materials, was to be sold, lock, stock and barrel.Titch and Billy weren’t too interested in the locks and the barrels but they were definitely in the market for any stocks of hardwoods that might be going.
On the Saturday morning, they got there early to secure a place at the front.The premises were crowded with dealers and artisans of all kinds, all looking, like them, for bargains. There were lots of miscellaneous pieces of exotic hardwood put up for sale: mahogany, teak, ebony, iroko, rosewood, walnut. The wood was seasoned and ready for working. The bidding was keen and Billy was in there with the rest of them, holding up his auction number. It was dangerous for him to attend an auction like this; in fact, dangerous for him to attend any auction, for like Oscar Wilde he could resist anything but temptation.
‘I think we have enough now,’ Titch whispered to him when he’d secured the twentieth batch of wood.‘There should be enough to keep us going for the next year.’
Titch was right. Anyway, there was no hardwood left. Most of it was now registered to them.
When the auction was over, they collected the wood, which was heavy, and packed it into the boot and back seat of the old Morris Oxford. Billy found that in addition to the wood, he had somehow bid for a mountain of boxes containing sundry plumbing and.electrical accessories: wires, sockets, u-bends, T-joints, giant G-cramps, and lots of other things whose purpose stumped him. They were all his and they weighed a ton. They managed, only God knew how, to pack them into the Morris but the poor old car was now well down on its springs. The whole way back, it screeched and squealed in agony at the torture to which they’d subjected it.
At home, they unpacked the purchases into the cellar, leaving hardly any room to move. As Billy viewed the huge collection of wood and metal he’d bought, he felt like the old farmer in the Grimm Brothers fairytale: the one where he went out to buy a cow and came back with a turkey, or was it a donkey? Anyway, it was the wrong thing.
Before getting down to business in the workshop, they attended a wood-turning course in the Lake District — a sure sign that they were taking the whole thing seriously. They were the only two students on the course which was conducted by a master craftsman who had his workshop in a converted chapel deep in the heart of the countryside and away from other human beings. Surrounded by beautiful lakes, mountains and valleys, they began their woodcraft course.The first thing that struck them was that the floor of the workshop was two feet deep in wood shavings.
‘My wife comes out to clean up the place about once a month,’ their teacher explained.
‘Why don’t you work at home in Kendal?’ Billy asked him. ‘Why have your workshop here, five miles out of town?’
‘The wife won’t allow me to work at home. He smiled ruefully. ‘She said it’s too noisy and too messy and this old chapel was the only place I could find.’
It sounded ominous for his own chances working in the basement at home in Manchester. Apart from Laura’s complaints, Dr Gillespie next door to them in Manchester had once asked Billy if he could turn off his drill as it was interfering with his television reception. Maybe when the business was up and running, they could rent premises in an industrial park but for the time being it wasn’t on.
On their return to Manchester, they got down to work and found that there was something hypnotic about watching a piece of wood whirling round on a lathe and before long they were turning out all manner of objets d’art: wall plaques, clocks, barometers, bowls, pepper mills, serving platters and nutcrackers. This last item caused much mirth amongst Billy’s male acquaintances, especially when they heard he could also offer a heavy-duty version.
Meanwhile Titch had begun producing doll’s houses under Billy’s instruction. He taught Titch everything he knew. First, they bought the blueprints of several models and came to the conclusion that the double-fronted pseudo Tudor type was the most impressive. It was also the most difficult but they were ready for challenge. Next, they visited a timber merchant and purchased large sheets of compressed wood which was easy to work with, especially as Billy was the proud owner of a de Walt bandsaw. They worked with modest designs at first and Titch soon picked up the routine. After a few weeks, Billy felt confident enough to leave him working on his own. He was proud to see how Titch used his new metal tape measure to check all his calculations. Billy was so sure about Titch’s skill that when he suggested they install miniature lighting in the houses and even a front door bell, Billy went along with it immediately. As a final touch, they bought a few items of tiny Renaissance furniture plus one or two dolls and stood back to admire their handiwork.
‘I think our problem,’Titch said, grinning happily,‘is going to be holding the crowds back at our first craft fair.’
‘We must insist on orderly queues,’ Billy added. ‘And only one doll’s house to a customer.’
When they had produced six models, it was time to bring in their sternest critic — Laura. If she liked their work, they were quids in. With a fanfare of trumpets, they brought her down to the basement to view their masterpieces.
‘So, what do you think, Laura?’ Billy asked, removing the cover with a flourish.
‘The wood-turned pieces look fine. I like the eggcups in particular but the pepper mills seem stiff and refuse to turn,’ she said, trying one out.
‘Just a few adjustments needed,’ he said hastily.
‘And then there’s the barometer, it’s not straight
‘OK, OK, Laura,’ he said testily. ‘I get the picture. Everything will be superb when we’ve done a little more work on them. But look at the doll’s houses. You can’t fault them, surely.’
She pursed her lips as she carried out an inspection, walking round the back of Titch’s masterpieces. Finally she pronounced her verdict.
‘They don’t look quite right,’ she said carefully. ‘Was it part of the design to have the chimneys inclined at an oblique angle like that? At first sight, they look like authentic Tudor houses and are most impressive, but
Billy was half expecting this ‘but’. It would have been unusual if she hadn’t had a ‘but’.
‘Well, what is it?’ he asked wearily.
‘They look kind of skew-whiff. A bit cock-eyed.’
‘The houses have character,’ he replied.
‘You’re right, Billy. They’re certainly unusual. And what about the windows and doors? Are they supposed to slope like that?’
‘OK, OK. So they’re not perfect. But they look attractive. And little girls won’t be measuring angles with protractors and plumb lines.’
‘They can’t be skew-whifF!’Titch whinged.
But Laura was right. The houses did look as if they had been affected by underground subsidence.
They were at a loss to explain it as Titch had been so scrupulous in his measurements. To be absolutely sure, he had even used two tape measures.
Billy checked the front and the back of the houses carefully and the discrepancy soon became obvious. The back was longer than the front. But how had that come about? That was the question. He decided to look at the tape measures Titch had been using. One of them was in feet and inches, the other was metric.
‘We’re always being told,’ Titch wailed, ‘that we must go metric and so I bought a new measure.’
‘But you were not meant to use both,’ Billy said. ‘It was either one or the other. It’s a damn good job you weren’t working in the American space programme or NASA would be in serious trouble.The question now is: what do we do with these six houses after all the money we’ve spent?’
Laura had the answer.
‘Why not make out that you’ve made them crooked deliberately? You could advertise them at the craft fairs as towers of Pisa or listed buildings or maybe illustrations of the nursery rhyme, “The House that Jack Built”. Or maybe the House that Titch Built.’ She laughed.‘You could sell each one under the title of “The House of the Crooked Man”. You remember the jingle ends, “And they all lived together in a little crooked house”.
‘This is no laughing matter, Laura,’ Billy pouted. ‘These houses cost one hundred pounds each in materials. We can’t afford to lose all that money.’