When we were first married in 1961, we wanted an old house but were unable to get a mortgage. However, in 1969, we had another try and we bought an old house in Rawdon which we moved to in January 1970 along with our daughter, and our son was born very shortly after that.

There were various conditions for getting a mortgage at that time on an old property, and one of the things we had to undertake was to redecorate entirely inside and outside the house within a period of six months, which I agreed to do. And that meant for quite a lot of the time we appeared to be living with a decorator.

By the end of June 1970, the interior was totally redecorated and they had started to go outside to finish off by painting the outside. In early July, the gas board said that they were going to change from town gas to North Sea gas, and they were going to come round and replace the piping. On the 14th of July they were replacing our pipes and putting them in the cellar, and they were doing the whole of the three houses - we were at the top of a terrace of three. Work went on in the morning and when I popped home at lunchtime, which I was in the habit of doing then, my wife Jean said to me “We’ve had rather a noisy morning – there seem to have been a lot of arguments going on about something. I couldn't hear what they were saying, but it was obvious that things were not going according to plan.”

However, we sat down to our lunch and had our first course, and then we were going to have a strawberry pie, which Jean stood up to slice. At that moment there was a tremendous explosion, the noise of which could be heard at least two miles away. We didn't know exactly what had happened, but decided we ought to leave the house as quickly as we could, so we got outside with our daughter. Our youngest son, who by that time was five months old, was in his pram in the garden. Fortunately, although the pram was blasted with dust and bits, he was perfectly safe, but screaming his head off.

When we looked at the next house, the middle house had virtually disappeared. And what had happened – this is how I understand it, and I’m fairly sure it’s accurate – was that the North Sea gas pipes had been put into the house next door, but because there was nobody in, they hadn't gone in to fix a metre. The North Sea gas had been turned on, but the town gas had not been turned off at that point. There was a pilot light in a gas boiler of some description in the kitchen, and the house had filled up with gas and had just exploded when it touched the pilot light of the boiler.

So we started the long road of getting repairs done. We had lost all the windows in the back of our house and the cornices had been very badly damaged, so we had to start again, which we were not very pleased with having spent six months getting the things in order. However, because we'd only just moved we were fully insured. But I don’t think the people next door but one had got the same situation, and things were a bit more difficult.

So we had a series of meetings attended by the solicitors involved with all the three houses, and which I attended on a regular basis, together with the solicitor from the gas board. They really weren't particularly interested in making a move - they were going in their own time, which was a bit annoying.

Over time, perhaps about a period of 18 months, nothing had happened. But the other two houses were sold to a gas board contractor, and they wanted to buy our house, which I refused to sell. They then decided that they had to put the exteriors back, because it's a conservation area, in exactly the same way as they were prior to the explosion. This took probably the best part of two years, and then we had all the problem of sorting out compensation for the disruption, and that took about another year.

Eventually, after three years, everything was sorted out and we thought “What should we do?”

My wife Jean said “I've had enough of this now. Although we wanted an old house, I don't want to live here anymore - we must go”.

And I said to her “Well, we did really want this house and it was a very nice house - it was exactly what we wanted. Why don't we give it six months? Then at the end of six months, we can decide whether we want to stay or not.”

Neighbours had been very kind during this period, our daughter had started school, our eldest son had started at nursery school, and in the meantime we had another son born who was still at home. So we said “Right, six months and then we will make a decision.”

In the event we stayed thirty-two years. Then at the end of those thirty-two years we moved to a smaller house, because a five-bedroom house is too much for two people. And we have lived in our current house for a period of twenty-one years.