Nowadays we tend to use all of the rooms in our houses with gay abandon, but time was when some homes had a ‘good room’.

This sitting room was a sacred place, hallowed ground, used maybe once or twice a year for visitors, or at Christmas or when the insurance man came to collect his money.

Our good room was silent and cold, it had a fireplace that whistled in the wind it was so rarely lit, furniture my grandparents had owned, including a 1940s club sofa with de rigueur antimacassars on the back and arms, an out-of-tune piano and a swirly carpet. The walls were papered, never painted, and the windows adorned with crushed velvet curtains.

The good room was a repository for my parents’ wedding gifts, about 20 fine bone china tea sets and obligatory Royal Albert Old Country Roses dinner service. And there were canteens and canteens of unused cutlery.

The mantelpiece was adorned with a parade of Royal Doulton figurines and a gold carriage clock, whilst a glass cabinet was crammed with treasures, Waterford Crystal and ‘antiques’.

The good room was a place for beloved belongings to be kept safe and out of harm’s way. The framed photographs of ancestors, the ‘good’ stuff that would never be used. Compared to the rest of the house, the good room was plush, a place to be proud of, polished and perfect, just waiting, it seemed, for someone to come and enjoy its surrounds, except, no one ever did.