Tradesman's Entrance

The house in which I was born had four doors leading outside. There was the "front door", the main entrance. There was a side door, which lead out to an enclosed courtyard, which we would use for al fresco meals when the weather was warm enough. There was a "backdoor" which lead from the scullery into the kitchen garden. And then there was another side door, the "tradesman's entrance". This would be where deliveries from grocer, green grocer, baker, fish monger, coal merchant, etc, came into the house near the servants' quarters. In those days, to have changed the name to "tradespersons' entrance" would have been redundant. Until WWII brought some changes, women did not make deliveries to the houses in our town. About a hundred years ago, when my mother was still young, she observed a loaf of bread fall onto the road from a baker's cart. The deliveryman saw her watching, gave her a broad grin, and said to her "What the eye doesn't see, the heart doesn't grieve over", as he replaced the loaf on his cart.