My parents bought their house on Dane Road, in Southall, west London, in 1968, when I was a year old. My mother lived there until she died a few years ago. My father, who worked locally at the Quaker Oats factory, is still there. It’s a small terraced house, but my parents came from quite humble beginnings in Grenada, in the West Indies, so it was a big deal for them to buy their own home. My mother established a savings scheme called a Susu to help other Grenadians set aside money for a deposit to do the same.

She sent all her children to fee-paying schools. Although I never discussed it with her, I suspect it was because, like many parents at the time, she had a real mistrust of how the state system treated black children. This meant that she had to have several jobs. She worked as a nurse and ran a nursery, so there were always small children around first thing in the morning. Then, on Saturdays, she did hairdressing.

My earliest memories are of her doing two things: pressing hair in our kitchen and crocheting antimacassars. Eventually, she had a wooden extension put on the back of the house, where she installed a few hairdryers so she didn’t have to use the kitchen. It doubled as a rehearsal space for whatever band I was playing with at the time. It must have been so noisy for our poor neighbours.

When I was growing up, nobody under 19 was allowed into the front room of a West Indian home except on special occasions. Ours was a typical one. In fact, the set for my play Let There Be Love is almost an exact replica of the room that I grew up with, and it’s amazing the number of African-Caribbeans who’ve said: “But that’s my home! How did you know?”

It was wallpapered and carpeted in bright Caribbean colours, with white leather sofas. My mother held church services there during the week, but on Saturday nights it became my father’s territory. He and all his mates would sit drinking rum and telling stories of home. Then, on Sunday afternoon, it would switch back again and the pastor and church members would be taken into the living room to eat traditional food such as chicken, rice and peas, fried plantain and yams.

There wasn’t a television in the front room, because that would have meant that we’d want to frequent it, but there was a piano, and that’s where I started performing, singing and dancing for my uncles and aunties. It’s been completely updated since, although the piano is still there. The floor has been laminated and the walls are covered with family photographs, including one of me with Tony Blair.

The kitchen has since been similarly Ikeaed, but when I was younger, all the cupboards were built and hand-painted by Uncle Frank. There was always plenty of debate and conversation to be found in the kitchen. A lot of my older cousins had strong political opinions and several of them were Rastafarians. I remember the American invasion of Grenada being discussed energetically.

Upstairs, we had a bathroom, two double bedrooms and a much smaller room. My parents had one of the larger rooms, and I shared the other with my two brothers, Paul, who is a year older than me, and Terry, my younger brother. My sisters, Mary and Anne-Marie, slept in the other room. We’ve always got on well. I remember going to bed laughing every night. When we got to the age when we had girlfriends, I think we’d have liked to have our own rooms, but our parents weren’t the type: if we did have girlfriends to stay, they had to sleep with our sisters.

The front garden was paved, so my mother had somewhere to keep her car, but the back garden was her sanctuary. Caribbean people, particularly Grenadians, grew up as people of the earth. When they came to Britain, they traded access to, as opposed to owning, huge acres of land for a terraced house with a little garden – if they were lucky. Having a garden is important to a Grenadian, physically and emotionally. It is a connection to home. Before my mother died, she asked my father to take care of it. He took that very seriously.

I had a tremendous childhood in this house. There was always something going on and it was always full of people. I still have a key, and try to visit at least every other week. It’s the house where I learnt everything that has made me the person I am today. I even call my plays “the theatre of my front room” because that’s where, for me, everything began.

Kwame Kwei-Armah’s Let There Be Love returns to the Tricycle Theatre, London NW6, for a limited four-week run from August 5; www.ticketweb.co.uk

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