"As a child in the top bunk of the smaller porch I would leave the fireside, run up the stairs, get changed into my pyjamas very quickly and get under the covers with my hot water bottle. It was no wonder my father had chilblains."
Among Mr Prior's memories is one that recalls the banisters that graced the magnificent stairway. "They were great for sliding down, but unfortunately were in two halves, so you had to get off at the corner."
On the corner was a "squeaking" board on one of the treads. "I learnt to avoid stepping on that in later years as I crept home late from a dance."
After qualifying as a doctor and spending some time in Wellington, Owen Prior returned to Masterton and to living in the house with his wife Helen and his "growing family."
His father had bought the house next door and Owen took over most of the doctor's practice being joined by Dr Tenick Dennison in 1959, a development which prompted the building of a new surgery and examining room for Dr Dennison and resulted in several other interior changes to aid the workload.
The Perry St property was not without a hint of local, ancient scandal either.
Through the back fence of the property was a house which had been built as a nursing home in the late 1800s and therefore had a high verandah along the drive on to which people could step from cabs and drays.
"It was the matron of the nursing home that Dr Ross was reported to have run away with, leaving his practice vacant and allowing my dad to move into in 1909. In my days there it was the home of a milkman and later became Stan Lane's vehicle parts business.
"You walked through that area across Lincoln Rd directly into the Methodist Parsonage, so there was a regular exchange of people going to and fro."
Mr Prior said in his days as a practising doctor in the old house Perry St was known as "doctors' alley" as others who tended the sick seemed to set up shop in the same vicinity. These included not only the Prior family and Dr Dennison but also "the Cowies and the Beards."
