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Housing : Living conditions

C

colinwilliams1

Guest
We had a new house in the 1950,s and in the kitchen we had a kitchen table and chairs which i think was melamine and yellow.
A gas oven and a pantry and a sink and draining board.
Outside was the dolly and tub and washboard.

I can remember that at some point later, there was great delight from my mother when she had a HOTPOINT upright washer in the house that had a wringer attached to it .

And would you believe it I found the wringer in me mothers loft last year.

Goodness alone knows why it has been kept .
 
:D Colin the wringer :!: it would be a 'just incase' we had lots of those in our house, had something to do with both the depresion and the war when people were encouraged to keep everything just incase they became unaffordable, or obtainable. For some reason I still keep 'just incases' :wink: and you would be serprised how many end up being used again. :)
 
Pomm

Maybe your right ,I think I grew up with this instilled in me ,,You wouldnt believe the stuff we found when my dad died.

I still have a habit of keeping things but when i throw them out I always need them a while later. and have to but a new one.
 
Did anyone else used to make coal bricks for the winter? We used to mix the slack (coaldust) with a little cement & water and pour it into a wooden mould. The slack was pretty easy to get cuz no one wanted it as it was so fine it used to put the fire out.
 
Slack

Our mom usedf slack in a different way, She would bank up the fire, as it died late at night with a fair bit of wet slack. When she got up in th morning a couple of pokes with the poker and hey presto us kids would get up to a warm room!!
 
:D We would put slack and wet news paper in one of those old OXO tins and pack it down tight, to make firebricks. I loved getting dirty and messy back then and am still first to get 'Messy Play' out for the kids at work, made 'Mud Pies ' in the sand pit at work today :twisted:.Oh and I read 'The Three Billy Goats Gruff' 8) :lol: to 'The Little Rug Rats' today also. :lol:
 
I,m a troll follderoll and I,ll eat you for my supper "

You cant beat a good line eh .
 
When I was a bobby at Ladywood nick, I had an idea to get the courts to sentence our young wrongdoers to time making firebricks and the distributing them to OAP's in the winter. There were mountains of slack in every coal yard which they were glad to get rid of, the truckies would deliver it free (if you did not look at their tyres too closely) and the little darlings would make them as punishment for their sins. Now why can't someone organise something like that. I cannot believe that in this day and age, some of our OAP's still die from cold every year. Oh well..... off me soapbox and back to work....
 
The problem is they havn,t got coal fires anymore.

mostly gas or electric or even central heating .

and they still get cold cus they cant afford to put the heating on .

So the govt have the extra payment thingy in very cold weather .

community service is supposed to be the solution for miscreants.
 
OUR KiTCHEN

We had one of those quite shallow old sinks, a good length of lead pipe came out of the ground at the side of the sink, terminating in a brass tap.
We cooked by gas, on a very old cast iron type gas cooker. The was a cupboard, we called it the "Pantry", under the stairs. We had one of those tubular steel kitchen tables, and chair sets? We also had a gas boiler, in which mom done the washing, she'd spend hours on Sundays doing that. I can also remember what seemed like a huge? Welsh Dresser, the draws were always stuffed with Tea Packets.......... There were little stamps on them, every so often wed have a binge, and stick them onto a card to be redeemed at the grocery shop.
 
"You lot" have have got my fading memory working overtime :!:
My family moved from a back house in Unett St. Hockley, when I was about five years old. As some of you know, things were pretty grim in this area.
My parents had managed, somehow, to obtain the tenancy of a 3 bedroom house at the top end (the posh end) of Burbury St.
A couple of years after the move , I was evacuated (another story) but remember that initially there was no electric, only gas.
I can remember also that there was a shallow brown sink in the kitchen, much as described by Rod.
A metal cupboard cum dresser took up most of the space, but in the corner , built in, was a large cast iron boiler with a fire place underneath.
My Mother's first washing machine of her own :!: :!:
No more sharing a brewhouse, and outside, in the yard stood a huge mangle she could use when she felt like it.
Being a creature of habit though, she decided that washday would be on a Monday,without fail.
The boiler would be filled on Sunday night ready for the lighting of the fire underneath early Monday morning.
It took the whole day to do the family wash,mangled and hung out to dry.
It was in later years that the "leccy" was installed and we were able to afford a Ascot heater, but Mother still insisted that the washing had to be boiled, so it was some time before the boiler became redundant.
I look back now and wonder how my Mother survived to the age of 84 with all the hard work involved in bringing up a family of 6
Hey, memories are flooding back. The garden :?: yes we had a small one of those :!:
The brick built building, attached to the kitchen, which consisted of a coalhouse, a place to keep the miskin (later known as the dustbin,now known as a waste disposal container) and in between was the one and only toilet, complete with newspaper squares. (Dad always referred to these as tickets to the dirt track) :wink:
 
Me gran used to use the boiler for the washing and called it "THE COPPER"

They had a bathroom fitted(dont know when)(it was a council house ) next to the kitchen but the loo was outside the backdoor.
Next to that was the gate to the entry ..
 
Copper

Collin, I think that our dad removed our copper to make way for a aviary where he kept budgies, although I'm not altogether sure?
 
I can see our kitchen in Copeley Street even now (before it was modernised!) we had a decent sized kitchen and window for those days, a shallow yellow sink with a scooped out patterns round the edges, a copper boiler encased in brickwork and a fire would be lit at the bottom, when mom boiled the Christmas puddings for hours on end the walls would be dripping with steam. There were open shelves in the recesses each side of the boiler and mom used to buy fancy shelving paper with a pattern and pointed ends, on these shelves would be pots and pans, washing powders, Lively Polly washing up powder does anyone remember this,
Zebo black polish for cleaning the black lead grate, dad's shaving mug etc.

We also had a grey mottled gas stove, which always had a light on under the kettle for an instant pot of tea, I have never drunk tea, but I'm the oddity of a family of tea drinkers. We had a half size kitchen cabinet with
an enamel top, in this was kept the everyday cups, saucers, plates, basins bowls etc., and it also had a cutlery drawer. The floor was red quarry tiles, and my dad, god bless him used to move everything in the kitchen to scrub those tiles every week.

We also lit the copper for our Friday night baths in the old tin bath which was kept in the outside loo.
 
:D Sylvia if you had walked into our kitchen in a number of old 'Back-to-Backs ' we lived in you would have felt quite at home. We also had a door to the up stairs in one corner and just to the left of that door another door going down to the caller. My sister got her fingers trapped under the caller grating outside one day and to this day has flat finger nails on one hand . :)
 
Sylvia after reading your discription of of no5 Copley street it was just about the same as no9 Copeley street and I'm sure 100's of other kitchens in Brum. Mom had a grey mottled stove l got a good deal on it from John Wrights where l worked, it was her pride and joy and l know it also went to CastleVale with her,we also had an Ascot or "gyser" we used to call it never knew what it like to be without hot water, always thought how posh we were, of course we also had the old tin bath that was dragged in the kitchen either Friday or Saturday nights thats when the gyser really came in handy, l was usually the first to get bathed then Harvey my brother then it was a go with durback-comb for nits and of course the dose of syrup of figs l'm sure mom thought we had to be clean on the inside as well as out,oh! we also tingled all over as mom always but a good dose of dettol in the bath water makes me wonder if we were really that dirty??. After we had all bathed the water was used for cleaning the kitchen floor and the rest was used fo swilling the yard and entry never a drop wasted. Looking back now it makes me see how wastefull people are today. +-
 
In our back kitchen we had the sink as Rod describes with a wooden draning board, an upright kitchen unit with a sort of drop down door which doubled as a work surface, sometimes a scrubbed- top table and chairs, a gas cooker on legs, a gas boiled, and on Friday nights the zinc bath (that's when the table and chairs had to be moved). :shock:

My mother was into hoarding in case of another war. We were fully stocked up with the essentials; tea, sugar and cans of corned beef. :roll:

I can also remember finding a gas mask on top of the cystern in the outside khazi - can't think what possible use that could have in peace time. :wink:
 
You know we still call it the " BACK KITCHEN" and I have no idea why.

My dad used to joke after a meal and say "shall we retire to the lounge "

My dad always had bread and butter with every meal .

I can remember sundays we would have tinned fruit and condensed milk and bread and butter after sunday tea.

It makes me retch now but if your hungry you,ll eat most things .

We were never brought up and bread and dripping until we went to grandads in witton and he would walk us over to and around sutton park which was a long way for little legs.
And to eat we would take bread and dripping sandwiches and they didn't last long I can tell you.

I havent. eaten bread and dripping for Xn years but I reckon I could eat them now.

My wife lynn is amazed at how good I am at cooking "bubble and squeak"
a monday night meal,

I told her the other day that is because bubble and squeak is controlled burning which I am quite good at.
 
Back Kitchen

Collin, we called it the "Back Kitchen" too.... Strangely enough though, the living room wasn't called the "Front", not in our house at any rate. We called the living room, "The House" very very peculiar?

Fruit and Caranation Milk, it does sound a bit arrrggghhh. I loved the fresh pickle mom made, Onions, Cucumber etc etc sliced into vinegar and eaten with pressed meat of some unmentionable extraction.
 
Ours was called the back kitchen cos it was on the opposite side of the house to the horse road. 8)
 
:D I remember when I first went to live in London my cousins laughing :lol: because I would say something like "It's in the back kitchen". They would have just said, "It's out in the kitchen" an oxymoron if ever there was one :!: Tinned Fruit, tinned milk and bread and butter was also our Sunday tea sometimes we had 'Meat paste, or Fish paste ' too 8) . Tasted great after having bread and jam, or lard and 'Tommy sauce' all week, Saturday was the day for bread and dripping, with lots of salt and pepper on it, another Saturday treat was a bowl of Oxo gravy and 'Well done toast to break in to it 8) . My Kids and G/kids love what Col calls my 'Deppression food', they like to try what I talk about eating 'In my day' :wink: , all though my daughter hates Pork pies, calls them 'Cat food pies' ( sorry if I have gone of topic a little :oops: ). Our 'Tea table' was in 'The living room' not in the kitchen,and so was the 'Front door'.The kitchen one was for breakfast ' Quaker Oats' and folding the washing on as it came through the wringer. :lol:
 
This weekend

I must have a go at that pickle this weekend!!

Might it be the vinegar thats changed perhaps? maybe thats why it tastes different?
 
Yup
We still call the living room "The house" and the "Back Kitchen" as i said earlier .

I think sundays consisted of "two way family favourites" various comedies like the navy lark ,clitheroe kid, round the horne,Hancock,

Reading the sunday papers sleeping on the settee .
If ever mom and dad had a cuddle on the settee, all us kids would pile on top. dad at the bottom then mom them Les, Elaine and me .

Sunday tea was salad and the dreaded tinned fruit and carnation and bread and butter (had to eat it cus were hungry )

Then bath, and bed,and school tomorrow,(I hated school when very young )

We were not allowed to watch tv at all on sundays until after tea .

I remeber seeing a shooting star out of my bedroom window when I was under 10 yeras old and never saw another until last year when we had that particular heavy array ..

apparently we go thro a cloud of stellar debris every august.
 
We had our first bathroom in 1950 this was also my first experience of hot running water,BLISS. My first encounter with showers was in 1953 when I went to Erdington Grammar school,they were a long line of shower heads which we ran through as fast as we could.
I don't know when I first saw a shower in a house,I did not have one myself until the 80's.I am not a 'shower person',still prefer a long soak in the bath.
 
I was born in 52 in to a modern post war house so we always had a bathroom and hot water, but dad was still stingy with the water he said it cost alot to heat so we had to share our bath water :shock: that went on until we were teenagers, there was 4 of us ,we by this time were more fussy and refused to share the bath water also we wanted to bath more than once a week :lol: so it was in the early 60s that we had a shower installed. We were now able to shower when we wished :D i remember we had a mural on the bathroom wall of a lake i think in some where like Switzerland ,does any one else remember the fashion to have a mural pasted on to the wall that was then varnished?
 
Rod had a shower in his house long before any of us. :shock: I won't go into detail about it only being cold and coming through the ceiling. :lol:
 
Maybe a different topic and I hope it hasn't already been explained elsewhere but why 'brewhouse' when it was where the washing was done.
 
'Brewing'

:D Alberta I remember in one yard that we lived in there was more than one 'Brewhouse' and one was never used for washing, but for 'brewing' what I now know to be beer – As children though it was always a fascination as it was always kept padlocked and the windows were whitewashed from the inside. - We kids would (give each other a bunk-up) climb up and try and squint through the gaps in the whitewash, needles to say we could never make out what was in there and the stories that we came up with about what we had seen, or hadn’t seen abounded from the sublime to the ridiculous. :lol: :lol:
 
It was pronounced brewous wasn't it, all one word that rolled off the tongue. It's origin lost in the pronunciation I guess. :D
 
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