It's A Great Life: 4 - The Problem Was Smoke
...In the early years, when coal was delivered to the house it came in a horse-drawn coal wagon. The driver backed the horse towards the curb and then, winding a handle, tipped up the wagon and the coal spilled out onto the pavement...
Continuing his autobiography, Jack Merewood recalls childhood days.
The house was near the end of Lockwood viaduct where at that time there was a big shunting yard and the trains started about 4.30 a.m. moving trucks on to different lines, all the coal trucks in one line etc. ready to be taken away to their various destinations. There was a lot of noise but we were so used to trains coming and going all day long that it hardly ever bothered us.
More of a problem was the smoke and particularly the soot which would come floating down to my mother's annoyance when the washing was hanging out to dry. We all had coal fires so they added smoke to the already polluted air. You had to have the chimney swept every few months and that was a miserable day, because we couldn't have a fire and all the furniture had to be covered with old sheets.
There were the occasions when the sweep didn't arrive. Having no phone we wouldn't know until he wrote, perhaps to say that he'd been ill, and now he'd come 'next Tuesday'. When the sweep came, he'd fasten his big bag at the bottom of the chimney in the fire¬place. Then he would push his brush up the chimney to dislodge most of the soot which came down into the bag. Then he went up on the roof and pushed his brush down the chimney adding extra lengths to the rod as it went further down. The bag at the bottom collected the soot, or at least most of it. I remember a disaster happening one day when the sweep pushed his brush down the wrong chimney. This came as quite a surprise to our next-door neighbour, Mrs Thornton, and it didn't help matters either that she had a creel full of clean washing hanging in the room.
My mother in the meantime was thinking that perhaps there had been no need to have the sweep that day for there appeared to be hardly any soot in the chimney at all - until she heard some commotion outside, which turned out to be a heated argument going on between Mrs Thornton and the sweep. He and my mother helped with all the cleaning up; and my mother washed all Mrs Thornton's sooty clothes for her.
In the early years, when coal was delivered to the house it came in a horse-drawn coal wagon. The driver backed the horse towards the curb and then, winding a handle, tipped up the wagon and the coal spilled out onto the pavement. It was disheartening coming home from school to arrive at the bottom of the lane and see a ton of coal piled at the end of the path leading up to the house, for it meant that it had to be carried up the path in buckets to be emptied down the hole at the top, from where it fell into the coal cellar. The hole was then covered up with a metal sheet. Later things improved and the coal was delivered in sacks which the coalmen carried up the path and emptied into the hole. In the cellar was a door which led to the coal cellar and coal was carried in a bucket up the steps for the fire. Sometimes the coal was delivered in very big pieces so had to be broken up with the coal hammer.
There were lots of children in the neighbourhood. Besides Jessie and myself, on one side lived the Boothroyds with two children, the other side the Thorntons with six children, round the back the Beaumonts with four, and in the big house across the road the Chamberlains with five. Most of the time we played together in the wood across the road (usually coming home black from the soot), or in the street or on the pavement - hopscotch, whips and tops; the girls had skipping ropes, we boys 'bullies and steerers'. Big iron hoops the bullies, and the steerers a length of iron with a hook on the end, and we ran and controlled the bully with the steerer. So we were happy children and enjoyed our simple, harmless games. Sometimes we'd go up to Beaumont Park or to the playing fields, nowadays completely covered by houses.
Playing in the street wasn't really hazardous as there were very few cars about. Hanson Lane was quite steep, the top, above the railway bridge being just a dirt road, and the rest of the hill cobblestones. In the winter we used to have fun sledging down the lane in the snow. One day my mother bought a carpet sweeper and it was a novelty to drop pieces of paper on the floor and run the sweeper over them to pick them up. And I shan't forget the excitement of the day my parents bought a wireless.
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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/
