THE FLATLEY DRYER

[Stanley]

I was at Hope Memorial School until I was nine years old and can still remember that at the appropriate time whole classes were taken to a farm on a dry day and we all helped with lifting the potato harvest. We used to collect hips and haws from the hedgerows as well in school time. I think they were used by the Ministry of Food to make Rose Hip Syrup which was a good source of vitamin 'C'. There was also a regular weekly clinic and mother used to take us. We got a weekly ration of concentrated orange juice and a small bottle of cod liver oil free. All part of the strategy to keep us healthy.

[chinatyke]

We got a weekly ration of concentrated orange juice ...

Best orange juice I've ever had!

[Stanley]

We loved it and I even got used to neat cod liver oil, I still take it every morning straight from the bottle.
Before the NHS started I don't know how we paid for the doctor. He and my father owned a greyhound together in training at the White City so I suspect we got a good deal. Otherwise it was lots of home remedies, Scott's Emulsion and dirty socks round your neck for a sore throat..... Occasionally my mother bought a bottle of 'tonic', Easton's Syrup. It made your teeth go furry and tasted horrible! Sulphur tablets in Spring to 'clear your blood'. Sounds like witchcraft now but we survived!

[Bodger]

Fennings fever cure, ugh

[Stanley]

I remember it well Bodge! Mind you, it was good for dogs with Distemper. There used to be some good dog medicine called Lintox I looked it up on the web but the name is used now for a very powerful pesticide, the stuff I knew was a liquid for administering orally so it must be different. Day and Sons at Crewe were a very big manufacturer of cattle remedies..... I remember Lionel dosing me with Red Drink and milk when I had flu at Harrods Farm. Nearly bloody killed me! A lot of strychnine in it..... Doesn't half make your heart race.

[Stanley]

All this reminds me of how good it was to hear the news about the NHS being formed. It is hard today to realise just what a boon this was for society. An immense load had been lifted and we would do well to remember this when we hear arguments about the cost of the NHS which is, despite the arguments, one of the cheapest services in the world and envied widely.

[Stanley]

In 1947 I had a bit of an accident while standing in Morning Assembly at the Grammar School. I sneezed and fell to the ground. All I knew was that my back hurt terribly. I didn't get any sympathy but in the end they sent me down to what was then still the old Stockport Infirmary. It was a barn of a place, cold and I think perhaps originally a workhouse. I remember being left in a cold room clad only in my vest and in pain. I didn't get any treatment apart from my mother being sent for to take me home on the tram. In later years I always dated my back problems to whatever happened that day.
My point is that so early after the inception of the NHS I suspect I was still being 'treated' under the old order and all I can say is that today it would be described as neglectful cruelty..... That was why we needed a change!

[plaques]

I must be a slow starter, I was about 10 before I started shaving properly.

Gillette 1.jpg

[Stanley]

I had a go with my dad's cut throat at about that age..... It went well and later I got one of my own, best shave I have ever had. Kids put a stop to that when they sharpened their pencils with it and notched the blade....

[BillHowcroft]

I have a Sheffield steel one and a homemade strop of drive belting glued to a board.

Never tried shaving with it but, when I used to visit Spain regularly, the Spanish lady hairdresser I regularly went to used to clean out the hairs from my ears with the corner tip of a cut throat. I was always ready to wince but she never nicked me.

Best lughole treatment was from a Turkish barber when I worked in Aberdeen. He used to flash burn my lugholes with a straw and burning liquid.
Never offered to flame-thrower my nostrils.

Was watching the repeats of Andrew Marr's "Making of Modern Britain" who claimed Billy Butlin always carried one in his top pocket.

[plaques]

This advert was referred to the police complaints department. At the time they thought it was an under cover job. But using the latest technology they now think its an inside job.
.

Falsies 1.jpg

[Stanley]

Do you remember the inflatable bras? It was discovered there was a design fault. If worn on a flight the decreased air pressure caused them to inflate! I've just had a look on Tinternetwebthingy and was surprised to see they are still alive and well!

[Stanley]

One of the biggest changes I have seen in women's wear is the demise of the corset. The papers used to be full of adverts for them, I remember the 'Pulfront' particularly. There were many women then who couldn't bear the thought of not having a 'foundation garment' and I often wonder how much damage they did. Funny that today the trend is totally opposite, no matter what the physical characteristics, let it all hang out!

[Stanley]

Remember when this was the standard domestic gas cooker? We are so lucky these days to have ways of cooking that are easier. Just think what a boon a slow cooker would have been to a weaver. It would have saved at least an hour a day!

[Stanley]

I can remember when, just after the war when there were shortages of everything, my mother got a surprise one day when a new 'Servis' electric washing machine and wringer was delivered. Up to then she was still washing the old-fashioned way. She set to and washed all day! When my dad came home he broke the bad news to her that it wasn't for her but for one of his mates, he had used his contacts to get it. I don't know what ensued but a week later an identical model was delivered and mother had her washing machine! We forget now what a leap forward this was for a housewife.

[Stanley]

I was reared in a 'modern' 1930s semi detached house and never experienced living in old property.



We lived in the house on the right and even had a garage! However I still remember being intrigued every Monday morning on my way to school when I saw the activity in the courtyard behind the large pub that stood on the corner of Didsbury Road and Huntsman's Brow. It would be full of women bustling about. It was washing day of course and today we have totally forgotten what a major exercise it was doing the laundry. My mother washed in a dolly tub outside the back door and had washing lines in the yard, she had a wringer in the scullery that folded down into a table. Her washing was far less of a communal activity. Today we just throw a few clothes into the washer and go and watch TV! And yet the puzzle is that so many people complain they are 'time poor' and have no time even for cooking! I wonder how they would have fared 80 years ago. The excuse that they have to go out to work doesn't wash, so did the weavers!

[Stanley]

Because my dad worked for General Gas Appliances, we always had a modern gas cooker on 'area test', no doubt a bit of a fiddle! So I never experienced the old ranges or cooking on an open fire. However, whan we moved into Napier Road on Heaton Moor in 1945 the large kitchen had an old coal range and for a while my mother used it and always said that despite the extra work, she liked the range because the heat was more evenly distributed than in the gas cooker. Mind you, the range we had was a 'modern' installation, the ashes dropped from the fire into a brick shaft direct into an ash pit in the cellar which only needed occasional emptying.



At that time GGA were making the Rayburn solid fuel stove and we soon installed one. Mother loved it and did nearly all the cooking on it. I did this pic many years later and the Rayburn was still in place though sadly neglected.

[Stanley]

Apart from the size of the house which was much bigger, the main changes at Napier Road were that it was a terrace and the only access to the back was to go up to the main road and down an unmade lane at the back. As you can see it had a large back garden and we had a brick garage with a flat concrete roof built. My dad had got interested in gardening as the pressures of war eased off and he built a greenhouse on top of the garage which worked well. There was a coke stove in the garage which heated it and the greenhouse. There was a small wooden greenhouse nearer the house but it was rotten and suffered badly when I caught the corner with the heavy cast iron lawn roller and it went to be replaced by a rockery! If I remember right, father paid £850 for the house in 1945.

[Stanley]

Mention of the coke stove in the garage at Napier Road reminds me that coke from the local gas works was a good source of cheap fuel for domestic use. It was invariably collected direct from the gas works, usually by young lads with two wheeled wooden box carts. Coke was also the favoured fuel in council buildings for the ubiquitous 'Robin Hood' boilers. This was mainly because the council ran the schools and municipal buildings and also owned the gas works. Churches used coke as well. I think all us crumblies can remember the caretaker at school having his HQ in a cellar where the boiler was! Coke wasn't as easily burned on a domestic open fire but resourceful householders soon got the hang of it. A favourite trick was to use cast iron cheek pieces in the grate. Once raised to temperature they acted as initiators when fresh coke was put on the fire, it needed to burn hot to be successful. One advantage was that it was the first truly smokeless fuel.

[chinatyke]

Coke was invariably collected direct from the gas works, usually by young lads with two wheeled wooden box carts...

That brought back memories of my brother and I going around the neighbours on Saturday morning asking them if they wanted any coke fetching from Colne gasworks. We charged 3d a bag and could make a bob or two. It was hard work, especially in snow or if we took two bags at once. The bags were bigger than us.

[Stanley]

China, it seems to have been almost universal. We used to make pocket money in other ways as well, offering to do little jobs like sweeping the yard or even beating carpets for neighbours. Bit like a cut-price 'Bob a Job' initiative! I wonder if kids do it today? I can't remember ever having pocket money, any cash we had was earned this way.

[BillHowcroft]

In the late 70s I bought my first house on a new estate between Barnsley & Rotherham. These were the first semis in the area without 'a proper chimney'. I then had gas central heating put in and was chided by my adjoining neighbour, a colliery deputy, for not supporting the local coal industry.

He had a gravity fed boiler outside the back door that needed the bags lifting up and emptying into the hopper. It regularly broke down. I chided him back when I lifted a bag of his (free) anthracite chippings one day and noticed they were labelled to be from Poland.

[Stanley]

That's quite right Bill! I remember when the last major anthracite mine closed down. I've often wondered how people with specialised anthracite stoves like the Pitter manage now.

[Stanley]

An essential part of the household equipment in the days of open fires was a blower which, in it's most sophisticated form, was a sheet of metal with a handle that exactly fitted the fire surround and ensured that all the draught went up through the firebars. We never had one, my mother used to prop the fire shovel up in front of the fire and let a full sheet of newspaper be sucked up against it. When the fire started roaring the paper burned. The other tool was the damper in the chimney which was a flap in the throat of the flue that could be pulled into place by a rod with a loop in it that could be moved with the poker. When shut is forced all the draught to go through the fire and under the bottom of the back boiler, the flue from which discharged above the damper in the chimney. It was quite possible to boil the water in the cast iron back boiler. You soon got to be an expert at fire management! Either that or your life was a misery.

[Stanley]

Kitchen ranges and their evolution from the full-blown 19th century version to the 'Cottage Range' of the 20th century have always fascinated me. In the days before gas and electric stoves they were the heart of the home and almost always the only source of heat in the house. I've often reflected that the main benefit of CH is that it makes your house bigger. Before it arrived our world was limited to the hearthrug and woe betide anyone who left the door open in winter!



The olden days!