It's A Great Life: 3 - The Meatsafe
...We had no bathroom. The toilet (now a WC) was 'round the back'. There was no heat in the toilet, which we shared with our next door neighbours, the Boothroyds, so on cold nights in the winter a lighted candle was left in there to stop the pipes from freezing...
Continuing his autobiography, Jack Merewood tells of chillier times.
Although my birthday was 12 February I couldn't leave school until the end of term, Friday 31 March. To fill in the time between my birthday and 31 March, I spent my days in the woodworking class. There, among other things, I made a small fancy bookrack, a breadboard (still in use seventy years later), and, quite a big project - a meatsafe.
Meat, cheese and similar things were normally kept on a stone shelf in the cellar, and a meatsafe was just what my mother wanted. It was quite a big square cabinet, on four legs, the door and sides covered with wire mesh. It was pretty heavy and I carried it from school to bring home on the tram. It was so big that there wasn't room for it where the passengers boarded the tram, so I was allowed to put it in with the driver. Being such a special occasion, I was given an extra ha'penny to ride past the fare stage to Lockwood Bar. It was an awkward thing to struggle with from there up Hanson Lane (half a mile or so) and it was a relief to eventually arrive home with it. It was set on the stone shelf in the cellar, where it served a useful purpose for over twenty years. I duly left school on 31 March and started work next morning, Saturday 1 April 1933.
We had no bathroom. The toilet (now a WC) was 'round the back'. There was no heat in the toilet, which we shared with our next door neighbours, the Boothroyds, so on cold nights in the winter a lighted candle was left in there to stop the pipes from freezing. Occasionally, if the cold was very severe, the pipes would freeze anyhow, then there might be burst pipes needing the urgent attention of a plumber. The bath was a long tin one which was hauled up out of the cellar on Friday nights. In the kitchen (which when the house was built in 1855 was a passageway) was a stone sink and one cold water tap. We had a boiler there, so on bath nights bathing was quite a lengthy performance. We filled a 'lading' can from the tap and emptied the water into the boiler, which had a gas jet lit underneath. There was a tap at the bottom of the boiler and when the water was hot it was taken from the tap into a bucket and carried into the living room where the bath had been set in front of the fire. When we were children we bathed first and then went to bed, then our parents bathed in the same water. The water then had to be ladled out into a bucket, carried into the kitchen and poured down the sink. This routine was always on Friday nights. There was no alternative to bathing in the living room because that was the only room there was. As we got older we bathed separately, when we would be in the house alone. My parents slept in one bedroom and Jessie and I slept in the same bed in the other. When I was about fourteen my parents put another bed in their room for Jessie and I had a room of my own.
The only source of heat we had in the house was from the one fire in the living room. There was no heating upstairs and on cold winter nights ice would form, making beautiful fern-like patterns on the inside of the bedroom windows.
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To read Jack's vivid account of his wartime experiences To War With The Bays please click on http://www.openwriting.com/archives/to_war_with_the_bays/
