I was listening to the radio as usual this afternoon as I pottered about the kitchen.

Suddenly my ears pricked at the mention of The Manor House, in Birmingham. Some schoolboys had set fire to it. It had burned down and was likely to be demolished.

And all of a sudden, I was in floods of tears. I looked up the news story on the internet, saw the photographs – and the tears continued and redoubled.

Just an empty, decaying old house, destroyed one evening by arsonists.

But I knew The Manor House.

It was the hall of residence where I, as a shy eighteen year old, went when I left home for the first time and where I lived during my first year at university.

I didn’t have a gap year. I went to uni straight from school, as there was no money for me to go anywhere else. I didn’t have any employment prospects – or the gumption – to earn money for a foreign jaunt, even if I’d had the guts to go on one (which was extremely doubtful).

At Manor House I learned how to drink in the little bar, how to stay up late, how to be independent, how to make friends.

I also learned about class. There were Junior and Senior Common Rooms, and an expectation of the sort of behaviour and etiquette (e.g. standing up when masters entered the wood panelled dining hall, saying Grace at meals) that wouldn’t have been out of place in an English public school of the 1950s.

Many of my posher fellow residents were already familiar with these things, but I, a comprehensive school-educated daughter of lower-middle-class parents, had never encountered them before.

There were no mobile phones and no computers in those days, just one pay phone, under the stairs. Once I said goodbye to my parents, I was on my own in this alien environment.

It wasn’t easy at first, but I survived.

What I really loved about my year there (apart from the boyfriend I met there, who lasted until after I left university) was the old house itself.

Built in 1820, it had been the home of the Cadbury family of chocolate-making fame, and was suitably grand. It’s Tudor-style frontage faced fifty acres of grounds (converted to a public park) sweeping down through trees to a shining lake.

Some of the friends I made that first year lived in a large, shared room upstairs in the old part of the house. My own room, like most, was single occupancy and in one of the 1950s extension blocks to the side – all cold floors, sludge-coloured walls and utility furniture.

I loved to escape to my friends’ room, with it’s three old double beds, enormous fireplace, plaster mouldings, wood panelling and views of the former grounds. It was perfect for lounging about in, chatting for hours (though you had to sneak back to your own room at night, it was forbidden to stay).

My room was a cell by comparison – in A-block, no less – good for privacy and of reasonable size, but a bit grim, despite the cheap posters purchased in the student union.

The Manor House was the perfect setting for balls.

I remember the summer one, before I moved out and into a shared house in one of Birmingham’s less salubrious districts.

I swept down the grand staircase in a black sequinned vintage frock bought at the Rag Market, and later dangled my feet in the fountain, drunk as a skunk and twice as happy.

It was a bit like Hogwarts, but before Harry Potter had  been invented, and with alcohol instead of magic.

I had forgotten just how long ago it all was.

I hadn’t realised that in the years since I left university the hall had been sold and the building stood empty.

And I certainly hadn’t realised that it’s destruction would affect me so suddenly, so unexpectedly, so keenly.

Just a crumbling old house.

Full of memories, and, like those days of my youth, now no more. ♥