Delivering the milk.

Some of the Dawson family out for a stroll on a cold day!

These fields are now built upon, and the old farm in the background a heap of rubble.

As children we knew every inch of this walk. The streets of our small community being to the left of the photo, back down the hill.

The farm belonged to the Pickles family, and they and another farmer, who also had a dairy herd, called Mr Clarke, provided us with milk.

Mr Clarke had a horse and cart, which he loaded with two large milk churns and he would clatter along the cobbles at the bottom of the streets, and leave the horse waiting whilst he filled a smaller churn which he would then carry to each house, where he poured out the fresh milk into the jugs, or small metal cans, waiting sometimes on the yard steps or walls. Each jug had a cover. Some of these were of material which was beaded around the edges, to stop it from slipping off or being blown about. Also good to keep out the flies! I do remember him coming up our back street with his larger "billycan".

Then if we were not at school we would ask him if we could have a ride in the small cart back to his farm.

It was situated in the distance, as the crow flies, of this photo.

I liked the feel of the pull of the cart, as the old cart horse wound his way back up the farm lane. There was a rhythm to the movement.

The old lane is long gone but I did manage to find the entrance on my trip there 2 years ago. All overgrown and only the impressions remain. The old stone walls which lined the route are able to be seen if you look carefully enough. The lane is called Reeds Lane, and in the 1940's my mum's brother and his wife and baby daughter lived in a cottage at the top, next to the

farm. It was called Reeds Cottage, and adjoined the barn where the horse was stabled.

If the horse got restless, they could hear him. His great hooves shifting on the stone floor.

And Auntie Lily would say, so the story goes,

" Not to worry, it's only t'orse"

Once the horse and cart reached the farm we would get down and then wend our way home down the lane and on through the fields.

Happy times.

Earliest memories. 1950's East Street............. Coal men

Here I am outside the front door of number 12 East Street when I was about 4 years old. The tiny front garden was flanked by a low stone wall. On top of the walls in each street were regularly spaced circular iron knobbly remains of the railings which had all been sawn off and donated to the 1939-45 war effort.They were noticeable when you sat on one! We did have a small iron gate.

In the recent picture below, of number 14, which is now for sale, the walls are still the original ones, and retain their old character.

The old front door was a wooden one with a heavy iron door-knocker, and a circular doorknob.

In between the gate and the front door, as you will be able to picture here, there was a square manhole cover. This led directly to the cellar via a small chute, and was used for the coal men to tip in their delivery bags. If you happened to be standing in the passage between the front door and the back room when they began to pour in the coal it was a frightening experience when you were young! To me it sounded like the low rumbles of thunder under the floor!

Dad had to go down the cellar to shovel the coal along or else when he came home from work, the last few bags would sometimes not be able to shunt down the chute as it was all backed up. And before you could enter by the front door the pile of remaining black nuggets had to be shifted. It had a name.........................." Best nutty slack"

The coal men had leather backed jerkins, and used to shoulder the bags, and then have to carry them up the steep streets, having left their delivery flatbed truck at the bottom of the hill. They were always covered in coal dust. And looked as though their faces peered out of blackness, the whites of their eyes standing out. Of course this necessitated a thorough cleaning of the flags by the door afterwards, and then the usual bar of " donkey stone" came out to whiten the edges of the front step. It was like a small bar of hard biscuit coloured chalk, and the women folk got them from the rag and bone man, in exchange for the old clothes. As one of the old sayings goes, "Tha con allus afooard sooap!" Translated...................... "You can always afford soap"