I got my house when it was worth just £900 – now it’s been valued for staggering amount but I won’t sell it
A GRANDAD-of-five has lived in the same house for 82 years since it was valued at £900 - now it's worth a staggering amount, but he won't sell it.
Philip Jarman sleeps in the same bedroom in which he was born in his three-bed detached property in Basingstoke, Hampshire.
The pensioner inherited his childhood home when it was worth less than a grand - but decades later it's now valued at an eye-watering £650,000.
Philip's parents moved into the red-brick house in 1938, a year before he was born in the master bedroom.
He lived there during the war and spent a happy childhood in the home, playing in the garden and racing carts in the street.
But after his mother died, Philip inherited the house and decided it was too big to live in alone as a bachelor - so he went to sell it.
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Yet, very soon after, the bachelor changed his mind when he met his wife Leslie, who says it was "the best decision he ever made".
As the world changed around him, Philip's own life remained remarkably constant - working in a factory making forklift trucks for his entire career.
Looking back on his life under one roof, Philip said: "My earliest memory in the house I suppose was my father coming back from war.
"I was born in my parents' bedroom just at the outbreak of war in 1939.
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"My father may have come home for a period before the end of the war and then went back again but I was too young to remember.
"When the war ended, I would have been about six years old, I remember this tall gentleman coming in and my mother getting all excited.
"We used to have a coal fireplace back in those days and my mother used to tell us the sparks coming off of it were soldiers returning home."
Sadly, Philip said his father Harold only spent a year at home before he was in hospital for a year and died of cancer.
Then, six months after his older brother Richard got married and moved to Australia, their mother Doris died, leaving the house - worth about £900 - to him in her will.
"And I have stayed here ever since," he said.
"I was actually in the process of selling it not too long after, I felt it was too big for me as a bachelor.
"But then I met my wife in 1970 at a barn dance for the local rugby club I was a member of. I nearly didn't go but I did and we were introduced.
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"We got married a year later and I took the house off the market and we have been very happy ever since.
"She says it is the best thing I ever did, taking the house off the market - she loves it."
Philip, a father of two, says the house and surrounding area have both changed dramatically in his 82 years.
"A lot of things have changed though, we've got central heating now and double glazed windows. We've built a little lean-to extension on the side and designed the garden between us.
"When the house was built there was nothing here, just a bit of green grass down the road.
"There were no supermarkets, you had to go to the top of Basingstoke to where the shops were.
"There were hardly any cars like there are now and there were no traffic lights. Our traffic light was a policeman waving his hands around."
He added: "One day I was stopped by one of these policemen. I thought I was in trouble but it turned out to be an old friend who recognised me, you used to know everyone back then.
It’s a very, very different town to how I knew it as a youngster
Philip Jarman
“It’s a very, very different town to how I knew it as a youngster.
“There’s been a lot of changes, but I think the core of the town pretty much remains the same.
“The town centre didn’t change until they decided to do the new one, but there is still an awful lot there in the area of old Basingstoke.”
But despite the changes, he swears he has never wanted to live anywhere else.
It is not just the house that has happy memories for Philip, he also has many cheerful recollections of playing in the street as a child.
“We used to make go carts and tear off down the road. It was absolute fun,” he said.
“That was our fun, or sometimes going out for the whole day on our bikes with one or two other friends from around here.
"Sometimes we would go to the end of the garden and watch all the cars coming down from up North and London.
"There was no motorway back then, so people would have to drive through the centre of Basingstoke instead."
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Mr Jarman and his wife, who worked in finance, now have two children, Robert and Karen, and five grandchildren.
They are in no hurry to leave their home, adding: "I've got no plans to sell yet."
