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Childhood Memories

crikey pete you were posh if you electric lighting in your cellar...we had to use candles to see down ours and of course thats where the gas meter was...we had a cellar under the front room and one under the back room..coal was delivered into the back cellar...horrible dark and damp with lots of spiders..silver fish and slugs :rolleyes: if the coal was running low and mom and dad were short of money we used to have to go down and make up slack bricks we never stayed down there longer than we had to lol...none the less happy days

lyn
:grinning: i plugged a bulb holder into the ex lead that ran from the front room through a hole on the floor boards. lol.
as for coal, i got some bits from the old power station slack heap.and carried it home in a sack, i was like the stig. sorting about in the clinker and rubbish.:grinning: when i got home i was filthy.but mom did not mind.she was only to glad of the coal bits.
 
forgot to say that when we moved into villa st the ceiling above the cellar steps was whitewashed and painted in black on it was a swastika there was also a gas mask and and hand gun in the cellar and when dad started to dig the back garden he found a further 2 guns buried...to this day i have often wondered if there used to be german sympathisers living in our house but its probably just my imagination running riot...makes you think though :rolleyes:

lyn
 
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Birmingham Council used to supply concrete sectional coal bunker for the tenants. Our coal bunker was a homemade job using Anderson shelter corrugated iron sheets.
 
Was it similar to this one? This is the type my Nan had at her prefab. in Yardley Wood.
 

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Birmingham Council used to supply concrete sectional coal bunker for the tenants. Our coal bunker was a homemade job using Anderson shelter corrugated iron sheets.
we had one of them. dad put a old window frame on the top and used it for plants:grinning:
 
forgot to say that when we moved into villa st the ceiling above the cellar steps was whitewashed and painted in black on it was a swastika there was also a gas mask and and hand gun in the cellar and when dad started to dig the back garden he found a further 2 guns buried...to this day i have often wondered if there used to be german sympathisers living in our house but its probably just my imagination running riot...makes you think though :rolleyes:

lyn
it would be just the job now lyn,in this lockdown 1603526810942.png
 
forgot to say that when we moved into villa st the ceiling above the cellar steps was whitewashed and painted in black on it was a swastika there was also a gas mask and and hand gun in the cellar and when dad started to dig the back garden he found a further 2 guns buried...to this day i have often wondered if there used to be german sympathisers living in our house but its probably just my imagination running riot...makes you think though :rolleyes:

lyn
Or it might have been the IRA
 
crikey pete you were posh if you electric lighting in your cellar...we had to use candles to see down ours and of course thats where the gas meter was...we had a cellar under the front room and one under the back room..coal was delivered into the back cellar...horrible dark and damp with lots of spiders..silver fish and slugs :rolleyes: if the coal was running low and mom and dad were short of money we used to have to go down and make up slack bricks we never stayed down there longer than we had to lol...none the less happy days

lyn
My Nan told me when she was a girl she read at night by candlelight. Her dad put marks on the candles so she was not allowed to burn it past the mark each night! She used to laugh at the nursery rhyme line, hear comes the candle to light you to bed and she would tell me about her dad's stingeyness every time.She daid they had oils lamps, in the centre of the ceiling but you pulled them down somehow to light them and pushed them and they went back up?
 
Our coal bunker as very similar to this one. It was brick built and had planks part of the way up the doorway over which the coal was emptied into the bunker. It had a plank door with a latch on it.

To reach the bunker you had to go through the gate at the side of the house, past the kitchen door and it was built just at the start of the back garden. It was in a handy position so that you didn’t have to carry the coal too far. I think it was joined to next doors coal bunker. This was a 1930’s house, so I think the bunker was probably a fairly standard design. Expect most have now been demolished (or maybe turned into sheds ?). Viv.
That, Vivienne, is how I remember the one where I lived after I was five years old.
The coal was usually large lums, needing a hammer to break it up. That had the effect of creating 'slack'.
The photo below is a type that many people purchased for logs or coal. When empty it was easily re-sighted elsewhere. I have one which keeps 'dumpy bags' dry for filling when I am cutting back trees, bushes and other things for transportation to the recycling place.
1603535901666.png
 
Coke gave out far more heat then coal once lit. The phasing out of gas works ended my supply.
We had a huge coke pile at school and we used to run up it but if we got caught we got the cane. In the baby class they was a big coke stove one end and it gave out such a heat, we dried our snowy mittens and hats on the fireguard. I never remember being cold at school the old radiators kept a steady temperature. And I had short trousers long socks and garters. We used to pull our socks up so they went under our trousers hems and an extra pair of socks if we had wellies on. I could not then, and I still can't get them off and I would be wanging my wellie on the end of my soggy sock. My parther says I am like a big toddler! There is a blue ceramic coke stove in the garage here.Mice live in it. It must be old it was in a brick shed and the garage was built around it much later.The flue would have gone in to what is now next door's garden though I am wondering if it was there before they built next door. Those houses would be 1940's. We are much older. 1900.
 
I was at Moseley Grammar School from 1947 to 1952 and although the regular route was the 24 stopping at the traffic lights at the Wake Green Road cross roads, sometimes we'd catch the 1A into Moseley and transfer to the tram which terminated at Alcester Lanes End and then walk home near the Maypole. How those old trams rattled.
I was there '48-'54. Robinson was head ( who coshed me once - well deserved!), followed by Gaskin just before I left. I used to go by bike from Shirley and we would burn up the hill close behind one of the buses. Holy Ben, Phil Bullock, Beaky Brampton, Neddy Bacon et al. I went back to the grand re-opening of the main school some years back and it was wonderful to stand on the old stage, where I was in the school play a couple of times. Great times...
Antonym.
 
I was there '48-'54. Robinson was head ( who coshed me once - well deserved!), followed by Gaskin just before I left. I used to go by bike from Shirley and we would burn up the hill close behind one of the buses. Holy Ben, Phil Bullock, Beaky Brampton, Neddy Bacon et al. I went back to the grand re-opening of the main school some years back and it was wonderful to stand on the old stage, where I was in the school play a couple of times. Great times...
Antonym.
going down the cellar (coal hole) with a candle or torch to put a Tanner or Bob in the meter. all them spiders

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:worried:
Remember it well and been down cellar during the air raids,hearing the thud when a bomb lande you waited for the explosion if it went off. Getting out of the cellar when the all clear was given to the small burning wood, town gas, hot bricks being cooled down by fireman hosing down and seeing the destruction.
 
When the gasman emptied the meter all the dosh was on the kitchen table while the man sorted it, some for them and a rebate for us :grinning:
It would only be when the price of gas went up they come out and regulated the machine, either by allowing less gas through. As and when the gas prices went up, the rebates became smaller.:(
 
When the gasman emptied the meter all the dosh was on the kitchen table while the man sorted it, some for them and a rebate for us :grinning:
It would only be when the price of gas went up they come out and regulated the machine, either by allowing less gas through. As and when the gas prices went up, the rebates became smaller.:(
Pete, you are lucky! We never saw any rebates, they just came and took the money. I do remember them adjusting the meter which was under the stairs because the price of gas went up. It seemed like it was an annual thing right before Christmas!
 
Pete, you are lucky! We never saw any rebates, they just came and took the money. I do remember them adjusting the meter which was under the stairs because the price of gas went up. It seemed like it was an annual thing right before Christmas!
The electric metre always ran out in the middle of a TV programme like on holidays. We used to rent a flat. The metres took coins. Half a crowns maybe? And some it wouldn't accept. Nan had a TV once with a metre attached to it. A chap used to come and empty it, occasionally he gave her some back.
 
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