Black iron ranges and such stuff
 

Willowthewisp's thread about problems with the gas board brought to mind days which don't seem that long ago when we had open coal fireplaces, one with tiles in front room and the black iron range in the kitchen , and someone mentioned a mangle in another thread.
I wonder how many can remember the tin bath hanging on a hook in the backyard and the copper boiler being fired up for bath night in the days before council grants, the worst part was emptying it when you were newly clean , either by ladling it out or dragging it to the back door without sloshing the water and tipping it out into the back yard
How many folks still have a rack in the back room for drying/airing laundry ? or remember going to the local ironmongers with a giant size pop bottle for parrafin to put in the lamp to stop the outside lav freezing up during winter nights .
Enough rambling on , I've become my Grandad

Re: Black iron ranges and such stuff
 

I still have an original clothes rack on a pulley, which gets used often when it's rainy.

Re: Black iron ranges and such stuff
 

I'm there, John. Our house in Holland Street had all those home comforts. Tin bath on the outside wall which was brought in over the weekend for us kids to use. Oil lamp in the outside loo...........I remember it all.

I was about to say that it wasn't that long ago, but I reckon that the early seventies might seem so for lots of folk..............grrrrr

Re: Black iron ranges and such stuff
 

You mean you only had a bath once a week? You mucky sod!!!

Re: Black iron ranges and such stuff
 

Re: Black iron ranges and such stuff
 

Think we did then Ossykid .. didn't have the tin bath, but remember me mum sitting me in the sink when I was little (which was in the living room) .. got bathroom when I was just into my teens and remember mum exclaiming before I went out "Not another bath !" Well, isn' that what it is for now ?? Had grants then, didn't they ? to help you install one.

Re: Black iron ranges and such stuff
 

I remember all of those things......and the brass fender with the two endpieces where the wood and paper were stored for lighting the range.
Zebo or zebrite was used to clean those huge black ranges and you used a curved brush and rubbed till your arms ached....but the results were lovely.
My Gran thought she was posh because she had a new range fitted and it was cream enamel!
We used the copper to heat the bathwater too, but we also had a section on the range that heated water....though you had to fill it with a lading tin.....it did have a tap on the bottom so that you could draw the hot water off.
We all had a bath every friday night....cleanest went in first...we all bathed in the same water. Wasn't bad for me because being a girl I got the first bath. I wouldn't have like to be the last one in though. The rest of the week we were encouraged to have an 'all over' wash!

Re: Black iron ranges and such stuff
 

I can remember haveing to get in the old tin bath on a Friday night in front ov the open fire.
I had to bath MUMMIBOO and her sister in the sink coz we had no bathroom when we got our 1st house.

Re: Black iron ranges and such stuff
 

Re: Black iron ranges and such stuff
 

I was born and brought up on Blackburn Rd. in West End. When I was young there was a huge oak mantle in the living room, one of those that went from the floor to the picture rail with a big round mirror set in it. In the sitting room was a very large, ornate, black cast-iron fire surround with inlaid blue and white picture tiles. Each bedroom had a small cast-iron fire place and so did the kitchen.

In the 1950s my dad decided to "modernise" the house and he ripped them all out, replacing the living and sitting room ones with hideous "contemporary" tiled things - which we thought at the time were so smart. In today's values those despised fireplaces, which were all Victorian and are now very desirable, would be worth £thousands.

There was still a rack in the kitchen up to the time my parents moved to Blackburn in 1966 but the Belfast sink, again worth a mint today, was long gone and had been replaced with a modern, much smaller thing.

We never had the tin bath but our bath was one of those big iron ones on legs - again, that went, too old fashioned!

I have vague memories of gas brackets (unconnected) on the wall next to the stairs when I was very small. I can remember my dad taking them out and replacing them with electric wall-lights that were just like today's uplighters. There was also a gas tap next to both the 2 main fires downstairs and we used to connect a gas poker, with a rubber hose, to them to help light the fires. It's a wonder we weren't blown to smithereens - or gassed.

My mum had a mangle, when I was little, and a copper boiler - lit by gas. She also had a "washing machine" that was a metal box on wooden legs. When filled with hot water, detergent and the laundry, the wooden lid was closed and you turned a large handle on the top which moved a paddle on the other side of the lid. Half an hour of elbow grease agitated the washing enough to get it clean - after collars and cuffs had been scrubbed with Fairy soap. Doing the washing took half a day, nearly always Mondays, and the house was full of condensation until the next morning.

Cleaning materials were Brasso (I still use that), black lead and steel wool, large scrubbing brushes and soda crystals, beeswax polish and a Hoover vacuum cleaner that looked like a petrol pump and sounded like Concorde.

Re: Black iron ranges and such stuff
 

You were lucky to get a bath, we were washed in a Belfast sink every day, the bath was reserved for the workers.