DARBY AND JOAN

Evening Post, Volume CXIII, Issue 32, 8 February 1932, Page 13

DARBY AND JOAN

HOME OF FIFTY YEARS

Darby, aged 85, and Joan, aged 73, have just refused £10,000 for the cottage which has been their home for fifty years. And all the money in the world could not buy it.

Darby and Joan are Mr. and Mrs. Charles Suckling, and their cottage is in Golders Green road, London. Next door ig the forge where Mr. Suckling still works as a blacksmith. '^ - The Underground Railway authorities wanted to pull down the cottage because it lay in the route of a tube extension. They offered Mr. Suckling £10,000 to clear out, but got the shock of their lives when ho replied, "No, we've lived together here for fifty years, and it don't seem a day too long. Nobody pulls down- this cottage while I am alive." So the railway people had to alter their plans. j A "Sunday Express" representative saw Mr. and Mrs. Suckling in their lowceilinged cottage, 300 years old and now surrounded by modern villas. and : bungalows. * " These people who want to buy me out don't know what home is," Mr. Suckling said, "Fancy any builder for any railway thinking they could 4° Away with my orchard, where I still grow the finest apples and pears! "I'vo lived in this cottago all my life. I started paying for it when I was earning only sixpence a day and made extra pocket money by hiring out chairs for cockiighting 0n...' Sundays. Times'are not what they "wero.'whatwith only having occasional dairymen's horses to shoe, but I bavo my memories, i and I Jive on them, and Jive happily," And then Mr. Suckling told- how, more than fifty years ago, he walked along a , leafy lane which is now a noisy thoroughfare full of tramcars and omnibuses,: and mot the. belle of Golders Green village, who; is now Mrs. Suck*ling.' ■■* ■■ ; • ....;.. , ■:

Mrs. Suckling' smiled—then sighed. ; "Charlie is a good husband, but he is an obstinate old manj" she said, f He should have accepted ' tho offer of £10,000." . •■;;:.. ■'.'■■;;

"You know," Mrs. Suckling said to her husband,- "you promised to retire when you were seventy, rOharlie, and to take me round the world, and here you are still working when there is no need."