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Back to Back Visit (On the Day)

Astoness said:
wondered what you were carrying round in yer bag froth...
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Don't start young lady or I'll play a video on here what I have just been playing to myself
19.gif
 
Glad you all had a good time. would love to have been there but neither of us could have managed the stairs
 
hi mike....the stairs were not for the faint hearted i can tell you:cry: and i had forgotton just how many there were to get up and down...actually we were talking about how narrow they are and concluded the upstairs furniture must have been transported up there via some sort of pully device from the outside and through the windows....:rolleyes:

lyn
 
Astoness said:
hi mike....the stairs were not for the faint hearted i can tell you:cry: and i had forgotton just how many there were to get up and down...actually we were talking about how narrow they are and concluded the upstairs furniture must have been transported up there via some sort of pully device from the outside and through the windows....:rolleyes:

lyn
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I felt sorry for Ian, it was like potholing for him:rolleyes:
 
lovely to see you both derek....:) smashing pics and i am still laffing at the 4th one...you looked a bit distressed....
 
Astoness said:
hi mike....the stairs were not for the faint hearted i can tell you:cry: and i had forgotton just how many there were to get up and down...actually we were talking about how narrow they are and concluded the upstairs furniture must have been transported up there via some sort of pully device from the outside and through the windows....:rolleyes:

lyn
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They usually took the sash windows out they did at ours I remember:)
There is a couple of photos on the Forum somewhere
 
I was looking at this picture, and it reminded me of an old poem, (below) in those far off days of such primitive toilets people relied on "The night dirt men" to come and collect the "waste"

"THE NIGHT DIRT MEN
COME OUT AT TEN
THEY ALWAYS TAKE
THEIR SHOVELS WITH THEM
TO SHOVEL UP THE SH@#E
IN THE MIDDLE OF THE NIGHT
AND TAKE IT TO THE GAFFER
IN THE MORNING"

No im not that old but learnt this when i was a kid. Max
 
Was well worth the visit,
we wen,t off to the lord clifden for lunch that turned into tea.
My wife and her sisters had a great day and asked me to thank the forum
for sorting it.regards derek..
 
I am so glad you all had a good time the photo's are great. Sorry we couldn't make it.
 
I watched that in disbelief, the back-to-back I lived in as a child wasn't like that at all. Where were the black beetles and the silver fish running everywhere, and the coal under the stairs, and the............. I could go on all night about the dump we lived in. A very sanitized depiction of a back-to-back in my opinion.

Barrie.

ps. it was a good programme apart from that.
 
Barrie, that's what my mom said when she visited the back to backs last year. One of her friends lived in the back to backs in town and mom also remembered the silver fish and the coal!
Sue
 
barrie said:
I watched that in disbelief, the back-to-back I lived in as a child wasn't like that at all. Where were the black beetles and the silver fish running everywhere, and the coal under the stairs, and the............. I could go on all night about the dump we lived in. A very sanitized depiction of a back-to-back in my opinion.

Barrie.

ps. it was a good programme apart from that.
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Barrie you forgot the cockroaches that scurried around in the dark and went with a crack if you trod on one.You are right it,s not what I remember thats why I will not be going to visit.I for one was glad to leave and couldn,t get out quick enough. Dek
 
Talking about creepy crawlies and according to a TV Prgramme the other night it seems like The Bed Bug is on the increase .
 
I think the people who restored the houses will be the first to admit the houses are only a glimpse of what they were like. Of course they are clean or people wouldn't visit. You can also stay in one well who would want to do that if bugs are running around. Carl Chinn told me he took some of the students from the university around them. The main comment from the foreign students was they couldn't believe British people lived in such small houses. When we visited my husband went back to his childhood to his aunts house he said it bought back many memories he had forgotten many good ones too.
We have a campaign going at the moment to save the transport museum. If we don't visit these places we will loose them. They are a great learning place for children to see how it was. There are several recordings you can listen to of people who lived in these houses which describe what it was really like. I can't believe we are knocking our own museums because that's what they are. Please visit and make your own mind up.
 
hi barrie and dek;
firstly barrie i missed it the programe that being firstly but i do not have to see it on film again because i as a child experienced it first hand the whole dammed
place with every think you would have whatched beleive first hand experience the red plater bugs they was big as peas running and acumulating in numbers at any day and night
masqurading in numbers by the hundreds crawling all over you when you was a sleep orjust lying in bed at any given time or on the bedding and in your pillows
they would bite you ; beleive me none stop all day longit was at night time these dammed things would come out iof the plaster work
on the walls and ceilings but our problem was contributed by thompsons the butchers on lichfield rd because our houses was backed into there slaughter house you could hear the pigs screaming and the heat and damp coming through the walls which below the walls ware your skirting boards was riddled with silver fish
and the coccroaches big and massive belive me you have never seen nothink like it the walls was covered by the hundreds of them in forms what loked
like king arthers sheilds of armour they was every where in that house just like said as soon as you crackedone they would scatter in to where ever they could get out of your siteand the lights they was climbing the walls and the ceiling and the floors
when you got up in the morning you had to splater the red bugscome out of your bed room and walk to the stair case peer down the stairs and each and every one of the steps was covered every inch of each and indivisiale steps with cocroaches big large ones as you walkjes down with your sandles or shoes on the ones that did not move to qickly you crushed it and cracked it then you had to sweep them up tons of them they was in cubbards they was every where in thefood cubbards the gas metoer you name iteven in the old joe anna we had it wasa hoorendous
life we had we was not the only one thou on the same side of the terrace of thompsons all suffered this but our house was slap bang in themiddle of there slaughter house
it was only for the fact that our mom being a member to jelfsthat they used there postion to see a certain member of parliment and took my father and mother to see this person that they got us out other wise from war years right up until the redelements of slum clearance in the sixty nine or seventy they orus would have been eaton alive
it was actualy being in a movie thats how bad it was i can actualy relive it now and transform my self back in time that how reality it was
as dek said you for got the cocroaches they was big and black and you cringe by golly you did that was the slums of aston lichfield rd cromwel square its
listed on the cencuss but i call it a terrace oppersite oldclaribelle coaches and petrl fore court before he got the old shara bang
we lived in a one up and down terace house one bed room shared by mother and father in one bed and and eight kids in the other bed oppersite the parents
four kids at the top and four at the bottom of the bedsby golly times was hard and covered by one bed sheet and lots of coats over us to keep warm
talk about the old day by golly you certainly do not want to be reminded when you have expereinced it first had talk about charles dickens
when i went to the domion repulic two years ago and seen the sightes there it brought it all home to me and i thought it wa bad it was nothink to what those peope
are living in between four sheets of galvanised sheeting
but as dek saidyou never or should never foget the coccroaches
have a nice guys alan ; astonian;;
 
Wendy said:
I think the people who restored the houses will be the first to admit the houses are only a glimpse of what they were like. Of course they are clean or people wouldn't visit. You can also stay in one well who would want to do that if bugs are running around. Carl Chinn told me he took some of the students from the university around them. The main comment from the foreign students was they couldn't believe British people lived in such small houses. When we visited my husband went back to his childhood to his aunts house he said it bought back many memories he had forgotten many good ones too.
We have a campaign going at the moment to save the transport museum. If we don't visit these places we will loose them. They are a great learning place for children to see how it was. There are several recordings you can listen to of people who lived in these houses which describe what it was really like. I can't believe we are knocking our own museums because that's what they are. Please visit and make your own mind up.
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totally agree with you wend...the back to backs are an absolute treasure to the city of birmingham and we are so lucky to have the only remaining ones to go and visit...of course we cant have them in the same condition as they were a century ago...dont think health and safely would allow that (and would we really want it) but its as close as you will come to experiencing just how it was back in the day..ive been twice already and another visit is planned...

oh that lovely little sweet shop on the corner...i could just sit in there all day long...:):)

lyn
 
Thanks Lyn yes we often get people asking what 4 back of 3 means these houses explain it and bring in visitors from far afield which can only be good for the economy of the city.
I love the sweet shop too I always bring some back for the grandchildren... I will take them when they are a bit older and can understand.
 
Just to prove your point Wend, take a look at the 3 back of 153 thread. Perhaps you could explain i would only confuse the issue even more.lol
 
Thanks Robert I am having trouble finding the thread you refer to is it under that title?
 
The BBC2 programme 'Reel History of Britain' had one from the 1930's where they talked to people in the 1930's who lived in back to backs although not in B'ham. The film showed what the houses were like!! We wouldn't want to live like that now.
Sheri
 
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