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| Joe & Mary Ann's house in 1974 |
If you belong to a certain generation you will remember being woken to the sound of the ash being raked in the fire place.
It didn’t go on long but it was that early morning call which was the prelude to getting up.
In our old house it was the kitchen stove which heated the water in our back boiler and gave us heat for the day and hot water.
It was dad’s first job after getting up and before going out for work. The coal came from the coal cellar and before any of us were up the fire had burst back into life.
In my grandmother’s home in Hope Street it was first the kitchen range and then the front room fire.
And I suspect it would have been the same here in Joe and Mary Ann’s house as it was across the country.
Of course in the posher homes there would have been a servant to do it but here like as not it would have been Joe.
The coal cellar is still there and I do have plans to reinstate it but whenever I raise the idea it is met with stiff resistance.
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| The dining room in 2012 |
There were two distinct sounds. First there was the noise of the coal thundering down the shoot like a roar and then the after sound, as the pile began to settle. This was accompanied by that powerful coal smell which permeated the downstairs for an hour or so.
As noises and smells go it was a pleasant one which was in direct contrast to bin day. Back in Lausanne Road we had no back alley, and no one kept their bins in the front garden, so the round steel tub had to be carried through the house.
Later in Well Hall the block of four each had a side gate into next door’s garden enabling you to carry the bin through their garden and out to the road.
But Joe and Mary had a back alley which may be a figure of fun and an iconic image of the North for those in the south, but perfectly does the business.
Dirty and heavy stuff never has to cross the front step, and was the place you first learnt to play as a child and where later in the gloom of early evening you met up with that special friend you had wanted to date for ages.
Alleys of course became the haunt of Burglar Bill who had the run of back yards and gardens and unseen in the dark might slip over the low wall and raid the house.
But ours like many across the city has been alley gated and now entry is by a key and little stirs most of the day.
The variant also seen across the North and Midlands was the communal back yard, entered from the street by a passageway between the terraced houses. Some of these entries had doors but others were just open and as you passed you could get a glimpse of life on the other side of the houses.
Here were the communal lavatories, and in the age before mains water the shared tap.
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| In the yard behind 12 Hope Street, 1932 |
Even so this was still communal living. You knew when Mrs Thornton was going to the lavatory, and what shift her husband was on by the sound of him wheeling his back down the entry and above all by that noise of the fire being raked in the morning.
It confirmed the neighbour’s opinion of the young couple two doors away who rarely got the fire going before 8.30 and was a constant reminder that old Mrs Ruston who had never quite got over the loss of her husband and even though she did not need to was always up by 5 as she had been for forty years to see him out for the Corporation tram which rattled down Traffic Street and took him to work.
Now Joe had his builder’s yard behind the house alongside the alley and I doubt he had to be up so early.
Joe and Mary Ann seem to have got rid of their kitchen range long before most. For them the future was gas and electric and so it may well be that the sound of the grate rattling was not so often heard in their house.
That said as you will know we have open fires in the rooms downstairs and our neighbours will know that by six we are up and the fires laid by 8.
Pictures; from the collection of Andrew Simpson
*The story of a house,
http://chorltonhistory.blogspot.co.uk/search/label/The%20story%20of%20a%20house
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