The house that’s a home for a third generation

Mrs McClare’s grandparents were the very first tenants to move into the house in Rotherham when it was built, and their daughter and her husband – Mrs McClare’s parents – followed.

Although the great-grandmother was born in hospital, she was taken home when she was a few days old and has been living at the house in ever since.

Over the years, Mrs McClare’s family have tried to persuade her to move to a more modern property, but she says she wants to stay – although she has had a stairlift installed to make life a little easier.

“It’s a lovely house,” she said.

“Why should I ever want to leave it?”

When her grandparents Herbert and Eliza Lounds moved in, the house was one of the best in the street as it had a separate kitchen – although baths had to be taken in a zinc tub in the cellar.

They were followed by Mrs McClare’s parents, Edith and Sidney Swaine, who went live there to look after the couple when they got older.

Mrs McClare, the youngest of three children, stayed at the house after she married taxi driver Bill McClare in 1948, to care for her parents after her father was seriously injured in a works accident.

And when her husband died in 1991, Mrs McClare says she was determined to stay in the house, the only home she had ever known, and so she bought the property.

“It is what you would call a real family home”, she said.

“My parents moved in to look after my grandparents and I stayed here to care for my mum and dad when the got older.

“I met Bill before the war. He joined the army and was a prisoner of war for six years, after being captured in Crete.

“I worked in a munitions factory and, when we got married, I told Bill I wanted to stay in the house to care for my mum and dad and he agreed.

“I was a hairdresser when I left school and after the war I opened up a shop in my front room. It was just known as Vera’s.

“But I stopped hairdressing in the Sixties because I wanted it to be a proper house again.”

Mrs McClare added she is “so comfortable” living in the house and never wants to leave.

She said: “I have a kitchen, a living room and a front room.

“We had three bedrooms but converted one into a bathroom. I also have a garden.

”I have also had some lovely neighbours over the years and I now even have a stairlift, which has made life a lot more comfortable for me.”

Mrs McClare, who has eight grandchildren and five great-grandchildren, still does all her own cooking and housework.

However, her daughters Lindsey McLaughlin, 63; Teresa Beecher, 62 and 57-year-old Pat Webster, who were all born in the front room of the house, “keep an eye” on her.

Mrs McLaughlin said: “I think it’s lovely that Mum is so happy in that house, it holds so many memories.

“Her parents moved in to look after their parents and mum stayed to look after her family,” she added.

“She didn’t want to leave them after she was married and my dad agreed to live there rather than them set up a home together.

“Mum has worked all her life and had a job in a factory, and later as a cashier, when she stopped hairdressing.

“She is very independent and keeps her home lovely.”