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Over Crowded, Nah, Just Cosy
- Thread starter postie
- Start date
K
Kandor
Guest
It's not a picture I'd ever choose to live back in..nice and cosy?
imagine that picture with another 6 or 7 people in it.
That was my earlier life.
imagine that picture with another 6 or 7 people in it.
That was my earlier life.
brummie nick
master brummie
With all that washing hanging up, I'd say there were a few more in that family. 
H
harley
Guest
derek wheres the coats ,ha ha them beds would of been posh to us way back then .thanks lovely photos i have a high pram same as the one in the photo . harley
Louisa
master brummie
What a wonderful picture it has bought back so many childhood memories. I can so relate to the living conditions in the picture (without the Washing)
We lived in a two up and two down in Rocky Lane Nechells. We had a living room which was used for everything, with a big dining table in the middle and a couple of arm chairs each side of the coal fire which always had a bow in front of it. Hence the reason so many women seemed to have those brown squares on their shins from sitting in front of the coal fire.
The small adjoining scullery housed just a cooker, the sink, the gas washing boiler in the corner and just enough room for a kitchen cabinet, which had a pull down front so you could cut up bread on it or prepare food, which housed the grocery, crockery and the saucepans some of which had been repaired with a washer.
The funny thing was we also had a front room with some good pieces of furniture in it which was never used and kept for 'best' despite the fact that there were only two bedrooms and two adults and four children, a boy and three girls sharing.
In the bedrooms there was no room for anything else except the beds. All the girls slept in one large double bed with a wooden walnut headboard which was considered to be modern and my brother slept in the single bed with the brass bedstead with brass balls on the end and he used to hide things in it.
We could not afford blankets and we slept in our vest and knickers and a cardigan to keep warm. Our only blanket was our dads old heavy army overcoat with some of the brass buttons missing. We did have a feather overlay matress which we used to have to shake up and I think this saved us from the cold quite a bit as it was lovely to snuggle down in with the old stone hot water bottle at your feet, if one of the siblings didnt wrestle it off you.
When I was older I used to knit squares and sew them up to make a blanket but it was never big enough to cover us all up until it got washed and it stretched miles long then.
Looking back I can hardly believe the conditons that we lived in and survived, but I am glad of the experiences growing up because it taught me the the value of life and good friends and I also know if there is a recession I have the skills learnt from my childhood years to survive the harshest conditions.
I do especially remember that last thing at night there was nothing like a steaming hot cup of rowntrees cocoa and a piece of bread cut thick from the loaf spread with pork dripping from Thompsons Pork butchers on Aston Cross. How many would have that for their supper now adays and been glad to get it.
Louisa
We lived in a two up and two down in Rocky Lane Nechells. We had a living room which was used for everything, with a big dining table in the middle and a couple of arm chairs each side of the coal fire which always had a bow in front of it. Hence the reason so many women seemed to have those brown squares on their shins from sitting in front of the coal fire.
The small adjoining scullery housed just a cooker, the sink, the gas washing boiler in the corner and just enough room for a kitchen cabinet, which had a pull down front so you could cut up bread on it or prepare food, which housed the grocery, crockery and the saucepans some of which had been repaired with a washer.
The funny thing was we also had a front room with some good pieces of furniture in it which was never used and kept for 'best' despite the fact that there were only two bedrooms and two adults and four children, a boy and three girls sharing.
In the bedrooms there was no room for anything else except the beds. All the girls slept in one large double bed with a wooden walnut headboard which was considered to be modern and my brother slept in the single bed with the brass bedstead with brass balls on the end and he used to hide things in it.
We could not afford blankets and we slept in our vest and knickers and a cardigan to keep warm. Our only blanket was our dads old heavy army overcoat with some of the brass buttons missing. We did have a feather overlay matress which we used to have to shake up and I think this saved us from the cold quite a bit as it was lovely to snuggle down in with the old stone hot water bottle at your feet, if one of the siblings didnt wrestle it off you.
When I was older I used to knit squares and sew them up to make a blanket but it was never big enough to cover us all up until it got washed and it stretched miles long then.
Looking back I can hardly believe the conditons that we lived in and survived, but I am glad of the experiences growing up because it taught me the the value of life and good friends and I also know if there is a recession I have the skills learnt from my childhood years to survive the harshest conditions.
I do especially remember that last thing at night there was nothing like a steaming hot cup of rowntrees cocoa and a piece of bread cut thick from the loaf spread with pork dripping from Thompsons Pork butchers on Aston Cross. How many would have that for their supper now adays and been glad to get it.
Louisa
dereklcg
master brummie
i,m filling up Louisa,:cry:
no your right girl we had frost on the inside off the windows,you could,nt
leave a fire on all night?me dad used paraffin stoves and the one night
it could have only been me, the stove was at the top of the stairs so was the old enamel bucket that was used to boil your smalls and other things as well but anyway i knocked in to the stove, it flared i screamed,
and me dad came a running saved the day well night really.
i don,t think i used the bucket and i was,nt cold for the rest of the night..could have been a lot worse. happy days regards dereklcg.:redface:
no your right girl we had frost on the inside off the windows,you could,nt
leave a fire on all night?me dad used paraffin stoves and the one night
it could have only been me, the stove was at the top of the stairs so was the old enamel bucket that was used to boil your smalls and other things as well but anyway i knocked in to the stove, it flared i screamed,
and me dad came a running saved the day well night really.
i don,t think i used the bucket and i was,nt cold for the rest of the night..could have been a lot worse. happy days regards dereklcg.:redface:
dereklcg
master brummie
derek wheres the coats ,ha ha them beds would of been posh to us way back then .thanks lovely photos i have a high pram same as the one in the photo . harley
i don,t no what you mean harley,ye i do we were having a talk about that while walking around, but we were in nottingham,perhaps they were richer than us,the beds were top and tailed though.
catch you later derek.
what a truely wonderful photo. it so reminds me of my childhood days. mom didnt hang the clothes above the fire but we had a fire guard round the fire and she used to place the small things on the top of it to dry. i remember one day mom must have forgotton that she had left cloths to dry and when my brother went into the living room there was half and dozen pairs of socks on fire. i know a lot of families had it very hard and i was the eldest of six children. but i must say my childhood was a very happy one. we didnt have a lot of money but never lacked the most important things which was food clothes (thats when mom was not setting them on fire) and most important love. wales
T
the doc
Guest
I remember the old clothes driers that were mounted on the ceiling (whoops, watch the fly papers!) and were moved up and down on pullies. Sometimes, there were so many clothes drying we had a rainbow over the mantle shelf
Di.Poppitt
GONE BUT NOT FORGOTTEN
One wet wash day mom had the clothes horse round the fire, and she went out to the kitchen leaving my sister, a babby then, on the sofa asleep. She suddenly realised that all was going pear shaped when she saw a rosy red glow through the living room window, The washing was on fire, a towel with fringes on the border had caught a gleed. Quick thinking made mom open the sash window and throw the burning clothes horse through it. She burned her hands quite badly, and dad took her to hospital when he got in from work. A neighbour came to stay with us girls, and I so remember when thy came back from hospital, I sat with my head down afraid to look at my mom. Almost the first thing I heard her say was, 'They cut them off,' OMG, then when I dared I looked and her hands were still at the end of her arms, swathed in bandages. She had huge blisters and the Doc had decided he would cut them off. Mom didn't even have a scar.
Sakura
master brummie
Great picture. Our wooden pulley drier was over the gas stove in our small kitchen on wet days. It would be ironed and then put on the clothes horse to finish airing, out side if the sun was shining. We were lucky we had a nice garden. I remember having ice on the inside of the windows in the winter, some of our windows were frosted glass as they got blown out in an air raid and there was no clear glass around. Mo
MoEric Gibson
master brummie
I bet the woman in the armchair had 'road map legs' from that fire.E.
.E.
Graham
GONE BUT NOT FORGOTTEN
I must say derek wonderful photos, but the people that had such an interior must have won on Littlewoods, if you compare it to where we were dragged up at 2/66 Leamington!
Postie, great photo of yours, one that I have seen before. They were really modern people with that tiled fireplace.
