Moor House in the 1950s and 1960s
Moor House at 29 Hoole Road, Chester, became home to George Kimpton, his wife Ernestine (known as Tina) and her parents Ernest and Catherine Newport in 1949.
George and Tina already had a baby son, Damian, and in 1951 daughter, Jane, was born in the house. Nine years later in 1960 a third child, Susan, arrived to complete the family.
The imposing detached property, which had a coal cellar and a defunct wine cellar with a trap door opening for coal at the front of the house, was run as a Guest House with visitors staying from all over the world, plus one or two more permanent guests who worked in the city.
Some of the seven main guest rooms had metered gas fires and most had 'hot and cold water' with wash basins. There was a shared bathroom with lavatory and a second separate lavatory.
Ernest and Catherine Newport had a completely self-contained apartment on the ground floor.
The garden was large with a rockery on the side adjacent to Hoole Road Fire Station. A lawned area to the rear, with a brick-built sandpit, was separated from blackcurrant bushes and fruit trees by a hedge of rhododendrons. The expansive area of land to the rear of the lawn, which led as far back as Pickering Street, was sold for the development of flats in 1962.
A second dwelling contained within the Moor House plot was a small whitewashed cottage situated at the side of the lawn. This was rented out to a series of tenants throughout the 1950s.
One couple from America introduced root beer to the family and another (a retired Army major and his wife) treated the Kimpton children to days out at the seaside in their Morris Minor Traveler and provided outstanding displays of fireworks on Bonfire Night that could be seen all over Hoole. One never-to-be-forgotten box of pyrotechnics went off in a blaze of exploding lights before releasing tiny toys parachutists floating down from the night sky.
The Kimptons and Newports were animal lovers who had a menagerie of birds and pet animals including white doves, chickens, and ducks as well as a steady stream of dogs, cats and budgerigars.
Catherine Newport died on 31 May 1961 and Ernest Newport on 13 December 1962 after which the Kimptons sold the house and remaining land to a petrol station company and relocated to the North Wales Coast.
Information provided by Damian Kimpton