Anyone who doesn’t share my fascination for coal holes and street furniture should turn away.
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| Barlow Moor Road, 2020 |
I have been tracking them for years, and while some have been lost under a layer of cement, enough survive to make it a bit of a collecting hobby.
Once, pretty much any building with a cellar had a coal hole, and the lids came in different shapes and designs.
Usually thy were round, but never underestimate the ingenuity of foundries across the country to come up with slightly different variations on a simple shape which included the company name and a few twiddly bits.
I first started collecting them a few years ago and since then people have sent me their own and others from their collections.
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| Wilbraham Road, 2020 |
Most of these I collected a few years ago, but inspired by a morning of watching the paint dry on a sideboard, I zipped off on Sunday and came up with a few more, of which the first was outside Max Spielman and the rest were on the east side of Wilbraham Road.
That said two have been lost under a smear of concrete, one of which tempted a passer by to add their own comment in the fast-drying cement.
All of which just leaves me to make that appeal for pictures of more, which in the fullness of time can be inducted into the Hall of Fame. Along with the picture it would be helpful to add the location.
At which point I could go into the history of the coal hole, offering up the numbers of coal men in south Manchester at the beginning of the last century.
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| Wilbraham Road, 2020 |
But I have done that already, so where would the fun be in that?
Location; Chorlton
Pictures; coal hole lids, 2020, from the collection of Andrew Simpson
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