Today’s terribly important question... Coal

[lizzie145]

Originally Posted by SussexFamily

You knew it had failed when the newspaper was drawn in and caught fire!

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This will be me when I start to use my fireplace

[disneywiseowl]

When we were kids, aged 4:8, one of our jobs was to count the coal sacks being delivered as my father didn’t trust the coalmen.

We were also responsible for clearing/cleaning the grates & knew how to make/light a fire!

This was pre Health &Safety days of course. 😂

[WhereIBelong]

We had one of these instead...

[Mr Tom Morrow]

This coal post links in with yesterdays post about Rag and Bone Men.

It was my job to wait once a year for the Rag and Bone Man and sell him the worn out hearth 'basket'. I was instructed to ask for 3d and accept no less.

[Michyloulou]

I didn’t have one in the house I grew up in as a child, but when DH & I bought our very 1st property (a maisonette), there was one in the back garden. I’d never seen one before that and had to ask my Mum what it was!

[Poppycat]

My Great Aunt had one the same as that. We used to play on it when we went to visit. I remember the coal men coming down our street when I was really little. Full sacks lined up on the back of the truck.

Only lived in 2 houses with a real fireplace, one as an impoverished student and couldn’t afford coal, the other was an old cottage with very dodgy heating and I used to have to buy bags of it from the corner shop when I needed a fire.

[HevaDuck]

Yep Mam and Dad had a coal bunker outside the back door it was metal though it was an upgrade from the coalhouse that was in the utility. Remember Mam getting the fire going with a sheet if newspaper and we used to make paper sticks for the fire with curled up newspaper too

[marypoppins38]

I used to visit my great aunt and uncle lot when I was young. They lived in a 2 up 2 down miners cottage with a brick coal bunker and an outside loo at the bottom of the yard. It used to fascinate me watching my uncle make the fire.

[JLH]

wish we did have one of those - our coal was always dumped in a big pile and used to hate the job of getting the coal in ! As children we used to have to clean it out and start it too and yes the newspaper was often used to draw it up!

[RachelM]

We had one in our first house back in 1996.