YOU could search far and wide and not find a family more contented than the Maycocks of Twickenham. Seventeen of them have just been moved from a three-bedroom villa in Teddington to a solid three-storey house of their own, hard by Twickenham's famous green. They moved because they refuse to be split up into three families. The three generations of Maycocks believe in sticking together. They are always chirpy in each other's company. Sunday is the happiest day of the week for them, and Sunday dinner their jolliest meal.

The new Maycock home was bomb-damaged and the basement is still unfit for use except as a workshop. That is the domain of the head of the house, Albert Maycock, his son-in law John Stanley, and Mr. Maycock's strapping lads. Above stairs, the supreme ruler is smiling, brown-haired Mrs. Dorothy Maycock at fifty, grandmother of five girls.

If Mrs. Maycock had to choose her favourite proverb on Sunday morning, it would be "Many hands make light work," not "Too many cooks spoil the broth." Some of the grandchildren are a little too young to have an allotted job in the house. They watch and are useful for running messages. But all Mrs. Maycock's daughters lend a hand. Their work is parcelled out carefully beforehand. Some of the boys, too, are roped in for odd jobs. This has always been the way of life for the Maycocks. Living in overcrowded conditions, it has had to be. They have always fitted into the family scheme as neatly as parts of a jigsaw puzzle.

Sunday for Mrs. Maycock begins at 8.30 a.m., when she has a cup of tea in bed. "Ma's gunfire," her ex-soldier sons call it. Sunday is the only day of the week Mrs. Maycock can indulge in this luxury. The other mornings she is busy seeing off her bricklayer husband, the boys who work at the local gas works, her coach-trimmer sons-in-law, and the children who go to school. She takes her time getting up on Sunday because she knows the morning is going to be pretty hectic when it starts.

Mrs. Maycock handles all the money in the Maycock home. At 10.30 a.m., she has opened her purse and three shillings have been put in the gas meter in readiness for the Sunday cooking. Ted, fourteen years old due to start at the gas works after Christmas, has been reminded that the supply of logs and coal is running low and has departed to bring more.

The Maycocks prove that three women can share the same kitchen - and like it. Mrs. Maycock and her two married daughters never have a cross word. Mrs. Marjorie Stanley, the eldest, has her own two lively daughters Val and Pat around her as she works. Mrs. Doris Jones, whose husband is still away with the R.A.F., is attended by Wendy, aged five, and Linda, aged four, both fair and chubby. Marjorie's particular job is scrubbing, dusting and polishing the Maycock home. "I am very fond of housework," says Marjorie. "I chose it in preference to all the other jobs in the house."