In My Uncle's Cellar

So few houses have a cellar these days, but my late uncle's house, which had previously been my grandparents' house, not only had a full height attic but a full cellar as well. One corner was used as a storage for coal, with a trap door in the front path that the coal men could tip their sacks of coal down.

It was the last room of the house for us to look through and we weren't really expecting to find much of value in it. And in that we weren't disappointed! My Grandad had his workbench down there. Equipped with a large vice on either side it was used for woodworking and probably metalworking too as his trade was as an engineer. We found lots of taps and dies for cutting threads in both screws and screw holes and for all I know he may well have made the taps and dies himself as well.

The first thing to catch my eye was this rather gruesome looking figurine. Made of early plastic I remember it from being small when this topless grass-skirted beauty induced both embarrassment and a strange fascination for a twelve-year-old! The years have not been kind to her...

A vinegar bottle, complete with traces of vinegar in the bottom. Over the last twenty, thirty or even forty, fifty, sixty, or seventy years, the fumes from the vinegar have eaten away at the metal cap, enlarging the sprinkler holes and creating a few new ones!

My uncle had his photographic darkroom down here, though at one time he had been making preparations to move it upstairs into the attic. It was - by design I suppose - dark in there! A new stainless steel sink and drainer was propped against the wall either taken out, or waiting to be fitted, I'm not sure. There were still jars of chemicals, labels long since made unreadable. Developers, fixers, toners, model aircraft fuel? Who knows... Against walls shelves held faded tins of motor oil, old Christmas sweets tins full of paper clips, pen nibs and rotted rubber bands and a cardboard tube of some probably toxic toilet cleaner.

There's also a tin of grease here. Cars in the 1960s had to be greased regularly by pumping grease from a hand pump into nipples set into axles and other moving parts. The tins had an inner lid with a hole that when pushed down, dispensed an inch thick rope of grease, like squeezing a toothpaste tube. For some reason motor grease was hugely attractive to earwigs and by the time of a tin's second use, there would be several of them either crawling about, or immobilised by the stuff requiring you to scrape their bodies out...

A Valor paraffin heater. These were in use every winter to heat those rooms without any heat or where you only needed a small amount of heat to keep water pipes from freezing etc. They burnt paraffin which you bought in gallon tins and they smelt and had to be sited carefully as if one was knocked over it could easily start a disastrous fire. One of the more memorable TV adverts of the early 1960s was for Esso Blue paraffin.

They asked me how I knew, it was Esso Blue
I of course replied, "with lower grades one buys
smoke gets in your eyes!"

A strong box. Iron bound. Locked. Entrancing, exciting... did we have any pirates in our ancestry? It took us a while to find a key which was eventually found elsewhere in the house. With amazement I turned the key easily in the lock and opened the lid to see... more woodworking tools...

A 1955 Wolf Cub electric drill. Costing five pounds nine shillings and sixpence or yours for a five shillings deposit plus two shillings post and packing followed by six monthly payments of nineteen shillings and sixpence.

There were lots of tins. My brother opened this without looking at the description and poked his finger in. "Eeeew! It's some sort of white gunk!" he said, regarding his sticky white digit.
"I think you'd better go and wash your hands..." I said. Before plastic rawl plugs that enabled you to screw into walls, you drilled a hole, spooned in some of this asbestos paste, left it to harden and then screwed into it.

A Hotpoint rotary ironer for fast ironing of washing. Fitted with a 1940s Wylex plug.

More paraffin heaters. Smaller and more easily knocked over than the Valor, these burned with a blue flame and the thin metal cage under the cone-shaped top would glow red hot, the heat being reflected forward by the large reflector. There is little protection in front of it - plenty of space for fingers or even a small child's entire hand to get through that grill on the front.

The cat's basket, sitting in a stone sink under the cellar window. The cat this belonged to was called Sooty, a tiny demented ball of speedy black fluff when a kitten in 1963, he grew into a right bruiser of a cat, but died in 1974 after having to have an operation to remove a tumour. This cat basket has stood here for 43 years...

I've no idea how long it has been since these large ceramic electricity fuseboxes were in use, but they too have been lying on the workbench for a long time!

Trench art - two shell cases, I suspect from the First World War, one still with fire irons. When houses were heated by an open coal fire it was essential to have a set of fire irons. They comprised of a metal poker to stir the coal and mix the layers of warm and cold pieces; a pair of tongs to put fresh pieces of coal on the fire (it was usually wet from bringing it in out of the rain and in any case left your hands black if you touched it) They were also used to quickly retrieve pieces of red hot, burning, coal that fell out and rolled onto the floor before the carpet (or cat) set on fire! Finally there would be a small dustpan and brush to tidy up any coal dust that fell off the pieces of coal or to sweep the hearth once you had taken out the ashes of a dead fire before making a new one.

A house fire would be made on a grating in the fireplace, with either some twists (known as "spills") of paper or perhaps a commercial firelighter - Zip Firelighters were a well-known make. On top of this you would build a latticework of firewood to rest the coal on. The cellar fireplace still had a pile of firewood waiting to be used. It had been waiting since the 1950s.

More chemicals. On the left is one of those grease guns I was talking about earlier. Somewhat rusted now, but you gripped the bottom and pushed the nozzle against the nipple on the car and the body of the gun would slide up the tube at the top, pumping grease through the nozzle into the car's innards. When the gun was empty you unscrewed the bottom and refilled it with grease and earwigs. There's a bunsen burner there too - probably used my my Grandad in his metalworking. Or to light his pipe...

A bit of personal nostalgia. A 1950s Ludo board. A long time since I pushed a counter on that board!

And to finish this time, as we are almost into December now, a sheet of charity stickers from Christmasses of the 1950s. In those days whilst proceeds went to charities, their name would not be plastered all over the sticker (which was not sticky - you had to lick the gum on them). We would be disappointed as kids had a present not had one of these charming little Christmas scenes on them. I might put one on the presents I send this Christmas!

In memory of Geoffrey Burke, 24 May 1933 - 18 March 2017. R.I.P.

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Around Wales in the 1950s

A couple of weeks ago I was celebrating the end of a long-running task - the scanning of some 700 postcards from the Hayley Easthope collection. Readers may well have been wondering when to expect to see them, but with so many postcards from so many different countries it was a daunting job trying to think of how to present them!

So here's the first instalment. Wales is the country most represented outside England so today's selection are all of Wales. There are around 80 postcards from Wales so to try to arrange them into suitably sized collections, today's postcards are all older monochrome shots. They were mostly published as black and white, but there are a couple of sepia treated examples.

Llangwyfan Old Church, (The Church In The Sea) Aberffraw, nr. Rhosneigr. This tiny 13th century church of St Cwyfan stands on the south west coast of Anglesey. The land on which it stands was once part of the island of Anglesey itself, but erosion of the land by the sea sometime after 1770 caused the land around the church to be cut off at high tide, forming an island known as Cribinau. By the early 1900s the erosion was encroaching on the churchyard and some graves were lost to the sea, at which point a wall was built around the remains of the island to protect it.

In the latter half of the 18th century a very strange thing occurred. In 1766 Dr Thomas Bowles, an ageing English priest, was appointed to St Cwyfan's church. The congregation numbered 500 and of those, 99% spoke Welsh but no English. Dr Bowles spoke English but no Welsh... Not surprisingly the locals demanded he be replaced. A court in 1773 found that he should not have been appointed to a Welsh-speaking parish, but now that he had been - and legally - he could not be removed. In the event, he stayed for another ten months before he passed away, leaving the way open for his replacement by a Welsh-speaking priest.

Wrexham, The Yale Tomb & Sundial. Specifically this is the tomb of the exotically named Elihu Yale, born in 1649 in Boston, Massachusetts. He worked for the British East India Company and whilst in their employ became Governor of Fort St George in Madras. He made himself extremely rich mostly by flaunting the rules of the company and entering into secret deals. After five years he was removed by the East India Company and returned to live at Plas Grono, the family mansion near Wrexham in Wales, where he proceeded to enjoy spending his accumulated wealth. Part of it was spent in response to a request for help from the Collegiate School of Connecticut. Yale sent them some books, a portrait of King George I and some goods which were sold for the very considerable sum (at the time) of £800. A new building was erected and called Yale in gratitude and later Yale became the name of the entire institution.

The seaside resort of Tenby is one of Britain's most westerly towns, but still manages to have a seafront facing east on the south coast of Wales. This gives it a sheltered harbour and it was an early trading post between Wales and the Norsemen in the 9th century. There are remains of 13th century town walls. Castle Hill, seen in the top left segment of the postcard, started off as a hill fort and the stone castle was built following the Norman Conquest by the Earls of Pembroke. Meg and Ern sent this postcard to an address in Wellington, Shropshire in July 1959. They had attended a wedding on the previous Saturday and had then journeyed by train to reach Tenby that night. Perhaps they were the two who got married? The message finishes with a somewhat breathless "See you sometime - don't know when!"

The Promenade, Colwyn Bay, North Wales. Colwyn Bay is a resort roughly halfway along the north coast of Wales in the county of Denbighshire, facing onto the Irish Sea. It enjoys a mild climate thanks to the wind passing over the mountains of Snowdonia to the south which then dry out and get warmer as they descend towards Colwyn Bay. A lovely row of old-style motor cars along the Promenade with a half-cab single deck bus approaching in the distance. The card was sent back to Wellington, Shropshire on 11 July 1956 during which week "A heat wave decided to come too!"

Erddig Hall, Wrexham. Erddig Hall is a National Trust stately home (voted the UK's "favourite historic house" by Britain's Best). It was built by the High Sheriff of Denbighshire, Joshua Edisbury, in 1684-87. It was sold to John Mellor, Master of Chancery, in 1714 and on his death in 1733 passed to the Yorke family who owned it through several generations through 240 years until it was given to the National Trust in 1973.

Several years earlier a shaft from Bersham Colliery had collapsed underneath the house, causing a subsidence of five feet, requiring a substantial sum of money to save the house. Compensation paid for the necessary structural underpinning, but 63 acres of parkland had to be sold to finance the restoration of the house.

Writing on 21 July 1954, in a hand that turns each of the capital letters F, S and T to a J, the cursive lower-case is thankfully easier to read. "Just to let you know we are having a nice time and lovely weather. We are getting out somewhere each day. Hope Rex hasn't been fretting. We shall stay until the last train on Friday but don't wait for us if that is too late for you. All are well here and your Dad and I are feeling better for the change. Love to both, Mum."

Wrexham, The Cup and Saucer, Erddig Park. Three years later, Mum makes the return journey but obviously alone, for she writes: "Just to let you know I am having a nice time and a good rest. Could manage a month like this, shall be home Friday. Love to both, Mum."

The Cup and Saucer, situated close to Erddig Hall was a pool or font, filled with water by a hydraulic ram which forced water uphill from the nearby river.

The Gateway, Acton Hall. Another once-stately home near to Wrexham, Acton Hall was demolished in 1954 having become badly dilapidated. It had once been owned by the Jeffreys family - they who included the infamous Judge Jeffreys, the Hanging Judge, in the 17th century.

The card was sent again in 1954 back to the same address as the Erddig Hall postcard, by the same Mum and Dad. The postmark is missing the exact date but presumably this was from a different visit as although there is the same hope that "Rex is ok" (what was the matter with that dog / cat / guinea pig / goldfish / milkman?), on this occasion the absent parents are due to arrive on the "last train on Wednesday." Perhaps this time because the "weather is very wet."

Harbour and Beach, Saundersfoot. Saundersfoot is a hop, skip and jump up the coast from Tenby. The harbour dates only from Parliament granting permission in 1829, though coal from the many mines around the village had been loaded onto boats from the beach for centuries. Another card with a line of cars of the 1950s. This time a more modern light-coloured box saloon can be seen third from the right. This card has also gone back to Wellington, Shropshire but was sent by Meg (due to be half of the couple Meg and Ern who we met earlier) on 12 June 1957. She writes: "Having a lovely time here at Tenby. Weather perfect, been in for a swim once or twice every day. It has a beautiful stretch of sandy beach."

The Two Bridges, Menai Strait. The Menai Strait separates the island of Anglesey from the Welsh mainland. Cross from the Welsh mainland to Anglesey and turn left and you come to the village whose name trips so easily from the tongue: Llanfairpwillgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwll-llantysiliogogogoch... As the old joke goes: I asked the guy behind the cafe counter to say the name of the place really slowly. He said "B-u-r-g-e-r K-i-n-g...". This time another branch of the family is roaming Wales and writing back to Shropshire. On the 1st of July 1954 the message went "Thursday. Shall be pleased to see you at the usual time on Sunday. Order a fine sunny day. Love Aunty P, Uncle E."

Horse Shoe Falls, Llangollen. This is a 460-feet (140m) long weir, stocking a pool from which water can be released into the Llangollen Canal. It dates from 1908. This card is unused and therefore cannot be dated.

Fleetwood Tram Sunday 2014

Yesterday I stumbled out of bed ever so slightly late, remembering I'd said we would go down to Fleetwood as it was Tram Sunday. This is the day Fleetwood used to fill with old vehicles, buses, coaches, cars and lots of music from live bands, barrel organs and marching bands in a parade.

Today it is pretty similar except that widening of pavements to stop cars parking and the new tram platforms have taken away something like two thirds of the space for old vehicles and narrowed the road too much for a marching parade.

This was pretty much the sum total of tram activity too - a static display down near the Pharos lighthouse. I took the photo from this slightly strange angle because the Powers-that-Be had arranged the ugliest possible arrangement of barriers around the trams and the Victorian tram shelter to stop people from approaching or getting on the trams. I really do wonder at the mentality sometimes... At the top end of Lord Street was one of the new trams. But who wants to look at one of those...?

So let's focus on some of the best bits! Starting with an old 1966 Morris LD box van in the livery of Lakeland Laundries.

Parked neatly up a side street was this 1965 Volkswagen van with roof-mounted flashing light and siren and the legend Freiwillige Feuerwehr Dinkelsbuḧl (Free Willy Fireworks and Dunking Biscuits)

A Triumph Herald from the early 1960s when cars were instantly recognisable from their unique shape. No other car looked like this. No other car, as far as I remember, had a bonnet that opened like this... A catch on each side near ground level behind the front wheel just visible on this photo, released the entire section of bonnet and both wings which tipped forwards to stand vertically from the front of the car where a gust of wind would send it crashing back just as you leaned over the engine to find out why it had stopped...

1950s Austin A35 with sun visor over the windscreen and shielding the headlights in case heavy rain washed them out of their sockets. Note the dinky little front sidelights on top of the wings near the wing mirrors.

1950s Standard Ensign with both exterior and interior shots. The interior is pretty average for the time with painted metal dashboard containing most of the controls, lights, ignition key etc. The indicator switch is on top of the steering column which also has the horn button on the boss and what looks like a cover over an unused opening on the steering column. This is more likely to be for an optional column gear shift than a control stalk, but in this version the gear lever is on the floor and is long - the lever probably feeding straight into the gearbox with no linkages to go wrong! The headlight dip switch will be a toggle button on the floor also as was common through the 50s and 60s. I'm still convinced that's the right place for it - you could dip instantly to avoid dazzling oncoming drivers even if in the middle of turning the steering wheel.

They've been around for 40-50 years, but this probably is nowhere near as old as that. A quick search found that these kiddies' pedal planes are still being made and cost around £360. Dakka-dakka-dakka-dakka...

Sunbeam Talbot. Large, fast and a popular model for police cars in its time. Just imagine jumping out, truncheon at the ready and saying tersely, "Oy you blaggers! The game's up!"

Loved this! A 1950s Ford Prefect with a nice Esso theme - the "Esso blob" characters on the rear window pre-dated the Put a Tiger in your Tank slogan and the tiger tail appearing to come out of the petrol filler was once a common sight!

Then just when you think you've seen it all... A brilliant "hippo bike" complete with costumed rider and swivelling head. A friend on Facebook commented she had seen it in Hull a bit ago - wouldn't fancy riding it across the Pennines myself... I had a mooch around some of the many stalls selling toy cars and buses and came away with a model Burlingham Seagull coach in Yelloways livery.

I used to go to school on one of these from the age of 12 and still remember the joy of having your school cap torn from your head and flung from a window... Despite the model seeming to have no opening windows, the real article had sliding panes at the top of the large window that allowed a bit of fresh air to come in, or articles to fly out.

These coaches had a polished metal grab bar on the back of each seat for the benefit of passengers on the seat behind which, for a 12-year-old in an emergency stop situation, was conveniently at tooth height... Ah... those were the days...

Fleetwood Tram Sundays Index

Record Shops to 1960

As you'll know if you are a regular reader of this blog, I have a fondness for all sorts of music. It's mainly for pre-21st century music if I'm honest, but there's always been and probably will always be good stuff turning out. Anyway it's time for a closer look at the 78rpm era. That era takes in the first flat disc records from the turn of the 20th century through to the very early 1960s. They carried on for a few years after in other countries such as India and all points east.

Here we moved on to 7" vinyl records that spun at 45rpm - revolutions per minute. Some of the later 78s were made with vinyl. Most were made of shellac, a natural substance secreted by bugs that can be made liquid and shaped using chemicals. I have a large collection of "78s" ranging from the late 1920s right up to around 1960.

We'll have a look at some of the records and artists another time. Now I'm going to look at the shops where we bought our records through the medium of the sleeves they sold to contain them.

There were no record shops in the early days. As with the early days of computers, other related industries took on the new product. They were mostly musical instrument dealers. Record shops, dealing exclusively with recorded music rather than its more human creation, were still only barely making ground when I was a boy. We did have an electric record player though - which we still called a gramophone, though really that name means a purely mechanical device. The turntable was driven by clockwork with a coiled spring (coiled tightly enough to kill if you tried to take the machine apart) which you tightened by winding it up with a handle.

Steel needles were used - you had to use a new needle for every side (a single track) that you played. There were three grades - soft (meaning quiet volume), medium and loud. Gramophones amplified the sound through a large horn and were LOUD!!!! To quieten them down so the neighbours wouldn't bang on the walls you stuffed material down the horn. That's where the saying "Put a sock in it!" comes from... Steel needles were large. You can't play 78s with a diamond stylus used for 45s and long-play albums as it would rattle around in the groove. Instead a larger stylus must be used. Indeed there are different sizes for different periods, though I've found most 78s play ok with the single sapphire stylus I use on my record player.

Most record companies had their own paper sleeves that the records came in, but most shops sold harder wearing cardboard sleeves which advertised their business. This one advertises Songster needles and has a series of handy hints for gramaphone users with this example (Hint No.4) warning users not to move gramophones from warm to cool rooms which could break the main spring.

We'll have a look at some of the record company sleeves later too, as there's a few more shop sleeves to look at here. Cramer and Lea Ltd. of Liverpool stapled the sides of their sleeves before taping a ribbon of paper to keep the sides of the sleeve together. The tell-tale brown marks seen through the ribbon show that there are four staples - going a touch rusty... The firm also had stickers made with their business details that they stuck onto the record label. Besides records they sold pianos, televisions, radios, gramophones, (sheet) music and band instruments. This probably means brass and woodwind and stringed instruments like violins rather than guitars...

The sleeve from the Forsyth Brothers shop on Deansgate in Manchester (specialising as a piano seller) had headings and space for the new record owner to write the details of their record, a reference, artists, A and B side titles, date and the type of needle to be used to play it. This has been filled out in this case with the details of the record currently occupying the sleeve, written in ink with a nib pen with a neat hand with lots of curls and flourishes. The record is Dinah Shore and Buddy Clark singing "My One and Only Highland Fling" from 1949, which I'm sure very few of you will remember. But you may recognise the B side, which is "Baby, It's Cold Outside" that was revived a few years ago by Rod Stewart and Dolly Parton.

Not all shop-bought sleeves were more sturdy than the record companies' own sleeves. This example from Kerr and Company of Workington is little more than a paper bag, quite a lot larger than the record - though I should point out that in the early days some records were made at ten and a half inches instead of the later standard ten inches. Kerr and Company seemed to cover all bases. Aside from records they sold hobby goods and "specialist" goods, which sounds intruiging... Oh, and cycles and accessories - not such a related area to record players as it might have been in the Walkman era... (Walkmans! Now I am showing my age!!!)

But they weren't alone. By far the most common 78 rpm record sleeve is plain brown paper. Shops used to stamp them with a rubber stamp and inkpad to advertise their business. And H Marsden of Bamber Bridge near Preston was another cycle shop. Ahem! Sorry! Cycle and Radio Agent! Given that radios of the day were the size of a large piece of furniture and definitely did not work off batteries, that seems another strange thing to carry on a bike... But H Marsden were specialists at lightweight wheel building so maybe that made up for the bulky weight of a wireless (as we used to call radios).

The record is another 1949 hit - Ronnie Ronalde's "In a Monastery Garden". Although the label says "Sung by", he actually whistles his way through it, sometimes blasting out (no other way to describe it) a tune and sometimes doing birdsong impressions. I remember it used to drive my Mum nuts... On some of his records he yodels too. Not at the same time as whistling obviously...

Clown Time

A while since I featured any coin slot machines, so here's a short article around the theme of clowns.

In the amusement arcades of the 1950s and early 1960s most machines were still mechanical rather than powered by electricity. In any case "electrONic" was a word with an extra syllable and not yet in everyday use. It certainly did not mean the current meaning of the word, which now implies printed circuit boards. And that was probably because transistors were not in use until the mid sixties so complex electronics had to be performed with valves and wires and a chunky base unit.

There were lots of these in those 1950s arcades. Most people called them "Allwins", though that was a popular model of them. We called them "Flick-a-Balls" because that's what you did! They were an efficient way to lose money, though if you got the trick you could usually replicate it. A win got you your penny back and a free go.

Peppy the Clown (Sometimes "Pepe") was popular with children because at the time there were lots of puppet shows on children's TV. Cheaper to make than either cartoons or live action shows with expensive actors, the strings were painfully visible even on the small black and white TV screens of the day. This arcade machine played music and you could press any of four buttons which lifted his arms and legs. Wow, we knew how to have fun in those days...!

Moving out of the arcade to the stalls along the pier or on the Pleasure Beach, these were usually lined up side by side along the stall. Ping pong balls were put in the clown's mouth and dropped through the tube and into a numbered slot below which gave the score. Of course, the clown's head and therefore the tube would be moving all the time and ping pong balls bounce a lot! A variant had a goose's head instead of a clown and the cheapie version had no moving parts, but had a sloped perspex sheet down which you rolled the balls which bounced off a back plate before dropping to the lower level and then rolled back down towards you, landing in a numbered slot.

Coin Slot Machines Index

Percy and Elsie Alston

Introducing my Great Uncle and Aunt. Auntie Elsie was my paternal Grandmother's sister. Her husband Percy was a sub-mariner during World War One and went on to own and run a camera shop on Spotland Road in Rochdale. They unfortunately never had any children and both died within a fairly short time of each other some time in the 1970s.

A while ago a collection of colour slides and a few black and white negatives came into my possession and I've only today started to look at them. Uncle Percy was an enthusiast. He stocked and used both still and cine cameras in his shop and was commissioned more than once to produce films of coach tours on the Continent, which he and Elsie did by taking their saloon car across to Europe and then following the route of the coach, arriving in time to shoot footage of the coach approaching and then disembarking its passengers. I have a couple of these films on 16mm stock and some old Zonophone reel tapes of Austrian music that he used to accompany them during promotional showings of the films by the coach companies.

Above, Percy and Elsie are seen with Elsie's mother, my Great-Grandmother, . Few of these photographs are labelled (we don't do it do we?) so I've no idea where many of them are.

So this introduces them. I'll be bringing more photos from their collection to the blog every now and then - though perhaps the photos of my Great Uncle in his seventies, nude in the garden at their bungalow near Morecambe might stay private and unscanned... They did make me grin though as I always remember him as a fun character!

Family Memories Index