Example sentences of "[verb] once been a [noun sg] " in BNC.
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| 1 | You see , he 'd once been a costermonger himself , but that was before he married Miss Roach , the baker 's daughter . |
| 2 | She must have once been a child of the nursery school . |
| 3 | We came into what must have once been a street . |
| 4 | There was a spy-hole where there had once been a knot in the wood . |
| 5 | Apart from these two central institutions of the court , the Chamber and the Household-below-Stairs , there were several offices , known later as ‘ the standing offices ’ , which had once been a part of the royal Household and had now moved to its fringes . |
| 6 | Stopping outside , he checked his watch , and was rewarded with a sudden sharp blast from upslope , followed by a rain of small pieces of wood and clay brick which had once been a part of the Bagi . |
| 7 | Maybe there will one day be a novel from Amis which portrays the Patrick Standish of the Eighties — more baleful , no doubt , on certain subjects , nicer to his cat , surrounded by the monuments of the New Right and by the debris of the swinging past to which he had once been a contributor . |
| 8 | But the sand was thinning : the bones of dead monks were drifting to the surface of the pit that had once been a graveyard , while the headstones sank slowly towards the bedrock . |
| 9 | There was a ha-ha , and there had once been a maze : garden features which one might take to represent the outside and inside views of B.P. as an institution ! |
| 10 | Someone had told them there was to be a memorial service for Evangeline Booth that evening in the Regent Hall , which had once been a skating rink . |
| 11 | He spoke to a motor cycle messenger who had once been a roadie for King Crimson . |
| 12 | Its three tall windows gave a view of the stone terrace and the double flight of steps going down to what had once been a lawn and formal gardens , but which was now a half-acre of neglected grass , bounded to the west by the brick annexe of the Vehicle Examination Department , and to the east by the old stable block , now converted into garages . |
| 13 | Grove House had once been a convent with a chapel . |
| 14 | In the Corfe Castle listing of 1794 , one of the relief recipients , in his seventies and with a large family from a younger wife , is described as a labourer , but a marginal note informs us that he had once been a farmer and overseer of the poor . |
| 15 | He had once been a prisoner in Parfois himself , he knew the castle and the country round it , and owed his escape from it alive to Master Harry and none other . |
| 16 | The whole area was no more than ten or fifteen years old , straggling along either side of what had once been a country road and ending messily with the shell of an unfinished building of some indeterminate nature . |
| 17 | Humphrey lord Dacre of Gilsland acted as Gloucester 's deputy on the west march , while in Durham Gloucester retained George Lumley , heir of lord Lumley , whose father had once been a retainer of the earl of Salisbury . |
| 18 | Humphrey lord Dacre of Gilsland acted as Gloucester 's deputy on the west march , while in Durham Gloucester retained George Lumley , heir of lord Lumley , whose father had once been a retainer of the earl of Salisbury . |
| 19 | Inside the tabernacle grounds stood an X-shaped cross , and upon that hung a ragged figure that had once been a man . |
| 20 | The walk led to some greenhouses and what had once been a stable , now converted into a surgery . |
| 21 | The pope under whose jurisdiction he eventually fell , Urban VIII , had once been a friend and ally . |
| 22 | HOWARD Davies , 41 , director-general designate of the CBI , confessed yesterday that he had once been a member of the Labour party , but regretted it as a ‘ bizarre incident ’ . |
| 23 | In fact , he was a Beirut used-car dealer who had once been a member of the Syrian-backed Amal militia headed by Nabi Berri , a Shiite Muslim cabinet minister in the Lebanese government ( and a less well-known businessman in Detroit , Michigan ) . |
| 24 | The Crown court in Kidderminster heard that 46 year old , Andrew Tracey had once been a member of the paedophile information exchange . |
| 25 | He would fly that night to Damascus with his wife who had once been a dancer and with his children whom he loved . |
| 26 | Below him was another space which had once been a courtyard . |
| 27 | There had once been a row at Goodwood when the scrutineers rejected Colin 's car because it did n't have a fireproof bulkhead . |
| 28 | During the party leadership contest much emphasis had been placed in the media on the fact that Major had not had the advantage of a privileged home background or education , that his father had once been a trapeze artist , that his family had lived in a flat in Brixton in South London , and that he had left school at 16 and been unemployed for some time . |
| 29 | This was the spare room , the room that had once been a garage , and it was noticeably colder than the rest of the house . |
| 30 | Ceilings and floors dangled from what had once been a department store . |