Until we moved here 7 years ago I didn't realise that people still had "best rooms".
This house has what the estate agent (pauses to spit) referred to as 2 reception rooms, dining room, kitchen/breakfast room, store room and large panelled entrance hall, featuring a "Delft Shelf", with stairs to upper floor. When we viewed we were shown round by the then owner, incidentally the daughter of the original builder, who ushered us from room to room explaining what each was called. Because the "store room" was used to store her grandchildren's toys she called it the "Games Room" ~ it is now my study/office. The deeds and original plans showed that her Father had originally designated it as his office and I have since met one of his employees who remembers being paid through the window of this room on a Friday evening.
But to get to the point. She showed us one "Reception Room" with the words "This is my sitting room" and sure enough it looked as if that was its use, having a three piece suite, a bag of knitting and a TV set in it. The next and slightly larger "Reception Room" she described as "My Christmas Room". Later investigation revealed that she was a widow and that her four daughters had all married and left home some years before. The whole family visited her over Christmas and that was the only time that the "Christmas Room" was ever used but she felt that calling it "The Front Room" was too old fashioned and a bit "common". All her daughters and grandchildren that we have subsequently met called it the "Front Room" although strangely both reception rooms are at the front of the house. We, by the way, call them "The Family Room" and "The Music Room" because the big TV + Sky box etc are in the larger room and the kids tend to congregate there whilst the "Music Room" has a piano, guitars, violins etc in it as well as a lot of SWMBO's tat mountain.
