When the houses in Court Lane, Erdington where built just before WWII, they all had a coal house just outside the kitchen with the back gate coming between the kitchen wall and the coal house, so that the coalman could come up the entry between the houses and tip straight into it. When I have passed on a 'look that is where daddy lived' trip, I have wondered what had happened to the coal house, probably a granny flat now.
Not as messy as coal, but you are right took more time to get goingNico,
I could never play piano with cold hands and fortunately I rarely had to. I think I have told this story here before, but in the icy snowy cold winter of 1963 I was playing a club deep in the heart of the New Forest and within a few weeks they couldn't afford to heat the place. It got so bad that eventually we were playing in our overcoats, but that doesn't keep your hands warm. My sympathies and enough to put you off playing for life - at least I was getting paid for it!
John,
Yes, we dabbled with coke and once you got it going it was OK.
Maurice
SO what is COKE not the drug type of course and was it as cheap as coal? Did it emit fumes and pollute like coal?
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
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
lyn
i plugged a bulb holder into the ex lead that ran from the front room through a hole on the floor boards. lol. when i got home i was filthy.but mom did not mind.she was only to glad of the coal bits.
we had one of them. dad put a old window frame on the top and used it for plants
it would be just the job now lyn,in this lockdownforgot 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
lyn
Or it might have been the IRAforgot 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
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?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
lyn
That, Vivienne, is how I remember the one where I lived after I was five years old.
Like the one with the rabbit in but their lid sloped like the one I can see out of the window now. 2 doors up..The put grass cuttings in it..
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 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...
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.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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Pete, ours used a shilling! We also had a hot water heater that took a shilling. We could also get hot water by lighting the fire in the kitchen which was a little problematic because the coal-men seemed to disappear in the warmer months.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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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!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
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.
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.
