Web Page No 2712

15th  August 2020

1st Picture. 1950’s family

2nd Picture. Lighting with a gas poker

3rd Picture. All night burner

4th Picture. A Coal Bunker

Home Fires

We lived through the 1950s as an often shivering children and we all needed day-to-day survival tricks of living in a house with no central heating.

In those post-war years there was only open fires in the dining room, lounge and if you were ill and had a fireplace in your bedroom, one there as well. from an early age I assigned the task of going out into the shivering cold to get fuel from the coal bunker. Good, old fashioned coal that spat and flared for the fire in the sitting room.

One o'clock was the magic hour when the fire was lit, matches only and sticks soaked in paraffin for us, we never did have a gas poker! Once the fire was lit the sitting room became a hub, with the chairs crowded round the grate for maximum warmth. Crossing the hall to the kitchen was a dash across an icy abyss. Nothing was double-glazed and the windows were ill-fitting. The leakage of what warmth there was must have been horrific.

If one left a door open even a crack, one was pursued by cries of "Were you born in a field? Shut the door."

Having a bath was a nightmare. Bathrooms were ice boxes – ours had two outside walls. Hot water was limited to vagaries of the gas geyser before there was enough in the bath for a wallow. Those bits (knees and shoulders) that, even as a child, inevitably stuck out of the bath were cold.

The cooling water soon forced one out, and clambering into the frigid air – no electric fire fixed to the ceiling for us– felt like stepping onto an ice flow. It took vigorous drying with an abrasive towel to restore the circulation.

The approach of bed-time launched a full-scale operation. At 6.30, stone, metal or rubber hot water bottles were placed in each bed. No heat was wasted: and when it was finally time for bed the clothes were brought down and placed before the dying embers of the sitting room fire to keep warm.

Those rubber hot water bottles were filled and grasped as tightly as possible for the climb to the bedrooms. That last traipse across the frozen hall and up the stairs remains with me whenever the temperature drops.

The bedrooms were icy, and the speed with which one got into bed – teeth-cleaning in the frozen bathroom was such purgatory that we children skipped it if not under the direct gaze of an adult – might have won gold medals at the Olympics.

When all too soon it was time to get up, there would be ice inside the windows, and on really cold mornings. I failed to generate any warmth before I was down the stairs for breakfast in the warm kitchen.

My Mum would kneel reverently before the living room fire every morning, piling scrolled-up news-papers into a pyramid before putting on the coal. If it was particularly cold, I would lie on our sofa under a blanket, watching him. Sometimes I would scroll up a newspaper myself, and risk exposing my arm to the cold in order to pass it to him. When the fire got going, I thoroughly enjoyed it: I had earned that heat.

Gone are the stone hot water bottles; gone are the bedroom fires; gone is the one-bar electric fire. Perhaps what has really gone is the spirit of those far-off days. There was nothing we could do about our cold homes, so – wrapped in sufficient clothes to stock a jumble sale – we bore them. The limited tactics at our disposal were part of the ritual of life. One got on without (on the whole) moaning.

 

Stay in touch

 

Peter

 

gsseditor@gmail.com

 

You Write:

 

News and Views:

 

On this day 15th August 1960-1965

 

On 15/08/1960 the number one single was Please Don't Tease - Cliff Richard & the Shadows and the number one album was South Pacific Soundtrack. The top rated TV show was Rawhide (ITV) and the box office smash was Psycho. A pound of today's money was worth £13.68 and Tottenham Hotspur were on the way to becoming the Season's Division 1 champions.

 

On 15/08/1961 the number one single was You Don't Know - Helen Shapiro and the number one album was Black & White Minstrel Show - George Mitchell Minstrels. The top rated TV show was Harpers West One (ATV) and the box office smash was One Hundred and One Dalmations. A pound of today's money was worth £13.25 and Ipswich were on the way to becoming the Season's Division 1 champions.

 

On 15/08/1962 the number one single was I Remember You - Frank Ifield and the number one album was West Side Story Soundtrack. The top rated TV show was Coronation Street (Granada) and the box office smash was Lawrence of Arabia. A pound of today's money was worth £12.89 and Everton were on the way to becoming the Season's Division 1 champions.

 

On 15/08/1963 the number one single was Sweets For My Sweet - Searchers and the number one album was Please Please Me - The Beatles. The top rated TV show was Coronation Street (Granada) and the box office smash was The Great Escape. A pound of today's money was worth £12.64 and Liverpool were on the way to becoming the Season's Division 1 champions.

 

On 15/08/1964 the number one single was Do Wah Diddy Diddy - Manfred Mann and the number one album was A Hard Day's Night - Beatles. The top rated TV show was Conservative Party Political Broadcast (all channels) and the box office smash was Dr Strangelove. A pound of today's money was worth £12.24 and Manchester United were on the way to becoming the Season's Division 1 champions.

 

On 15/08/1965 the number one single was Help - The Beatles and the number one album was Liverpool. The top rated TV show was 'Coronation Street (Granada) and the box office smash was The Sound of Music. A pound of today's money was worth £ 11.69 were on the way to becoming the Season's Division 1 champions. Watts race riots in US and the big news story of the day was Riviera Police (AR)