Photo-a-Day  (Monday, 17th December, 2018)

Whereabouts is this please? The tall building in the background looks familiar but I can't get my bearings. What is the address of the terraced row, and can I see smoke coming out of one of the chimneys? Something you don't see much these days!

Irene. It's alongside Lock 87, near to Trencherfield Mill.

Irene. I think that the houses are on Swan Meadow road.

Irene Wigan investment centre is on the left, Trencherfield mill is on the right and the new canal bank side flats are at the back of Ron>
The mill is Eckerleys and the houses are on Swan meadow and Crown st
Wigan is supposed to be smokless so somebody is breaking the law, unless what looks like smoke is a drop of rain on the camera

Nothing is more cosy than a well lit coal fire in the cold winter months.
Mine is still lit the day after. Toast taste great too... time to fill my coal bucket for tonight and settle down.

Wigan - Smokeless - you should inform the council Mick, as far as they are concerned the Clean Air Acts of 1970/1990 do not exist, so those wood burners can pump out as much acid rain air pollution and cancer causing particulates as the owners can foment.

With a sherry or two ... Or three Garry? Mind those toes for chilblains...

Up to a few years ago, someone near us still had a coal fire; it was lovely seeing the smoke and smelling it and seeing the coalman delivering the coal. A coal-lorry went past our house only a few weeks ago, so obviously some places still have coal fires.

Yip and the Sherry around 9 o'clock, Veronica. Well remembered x.

There 's one thing with a coal fire - you don't have the worry about servicing and the unpredictability of it. It's the making of the fire and cleaning the 'ash hole' every day.... I recall my dad making the fire with screwed up paper, sticks of wood you could buy in bundles and coal on top. If it didn't 'get going' he would prop the shovel with the newspaper around it and whoosh that started it off- ( if the newspaper didn't catch fire!)

My grandad on my mothers side was an old Pitman and he lived in an old terraced house in Aspull (I was about seven or eight years old at this time). In the back yard he had a large wooden coal bunker which he needed to keep his Concessionary Coal in. Every so often when I went to visit he would put me through the top hatch in the bunker so that I could shovel the coal at the back of the bunker to the front so that he could reach it. I came out of the ‘Coal hole’ as black as an Oozle but I didn’t mind because my reward was a larger than usual helping of Rice Pudding with a dollop of strawberry jam in the middle.

Veronica, My Dad used to start the fire going in exactly the same way, but he chopped blocks of wood into sticks himself. I can see a huge sheet of the Wigan Evening Post and Chronicle stretched over the shovel, going brown round the edges. When my Dad was at work and the fire was fading, my Mam used to throw the contents of the sugar-bowl on it and we all had to stand back, so intense were the flames!

Sometimes the sheet of newspaper went up the chimney Irene! I recall him saying it would clear the chimney!!! Yes I had forgotten about the sugar. Me and my brother took it in turns to bring the coal in from the back yard. There was four of us huddled round the fire in Winter - my place was on a home - made stool in the corner. ( I knew my place!). I'm laughing at Dtease in the coal bunker - black as the 'hobs of hell'!

I remember all that, Veronica. And there always seemed to be someone's chimney on fire, didn't there?

I also get plenty hot water from my coal fire too.

Garry, most of the heat goes up the chimney! You have to sit on top of the blessed thing and even then you only get warm in front while your back remains frozen. Add to that all the mess and dust and the ashes that you have to leave in a bucket to go cold because you can't put them in a plastic bin and then compare all that with just flicking a switch to turn the central heating on. No contest!

The old gentleman I lived next door to for 30 years had a coal fire and the heat from it warmed my living room and back bedroom. The heat greeted you as you walked in his living room. When he died and central heating was put in - my house wasn't as warm again even with central heating. The 'gems uncovered when the present owner bought it were beautiful wooden floors and authentic wooden doors,wooden stair rails covered with hardboard all from the Edwardian period. Even A very large Moorcroft vase from the 1930's found in a nailed up cupboard meant for a gas meter was discovered. As he was an ARP during the last war it was thought he put it there for safety! Bless him! The present owners were - needless to say - thrilled at what had been found!

I said nothing of the sort about making a coal fire. My point was DTease, nothing is more cost than a well lit coal fire in the cold winter months. As regards the heat going up the chimney yes I'll take than, but then heat from a gas fire goes out the flue. As for sitting on top of the thing to get warm, when was the last time you made a coal fire? There is a skill to make a coal fire and to get the best heat from it...a skill you haven't got. Great story Veronica.

Can’t get toast from C/H like you could from a fire . Dad , god bless him , would get up make the fire , so we kids would have some warm. I remember still having a blanket to keep the cold out though . I remember the graft of the coal man , especially on freezing cold or rainy days , always turning up with coal to fill our coal shed at the front of the house , just inside the door . Can you imagine if we had dirty coal in sheds near the front doors now , the reaction ? Coal , and all who worked in it , like many of Wigan’s industries, are the very foundation of our country’, they , those people drove us forward to what we have today . What we have today is because of those who died for it or worked their socks for it . It did not just appear!, it was achieved with blood and graft. It is not pick or mix you got in Woolies , it’s plain bloody fact ! Without them , we just wouldn’t be!!

Xpat's mention of toast-butties done over a slow fire doesn't half remind me of TV's 'hot chestnut man' Johnny Morris.

It may look cosy Garry, but it's not cosy if you're the poor beggar who as to go out in the cold for another bucket of coal.
You can have your cosy fire Garry, I'll stick to my cosy central heating where I can set the timer so that it comes on while I'm still under the duvet and by the time I get up the room is nice and warm, in fact, the whole house is nice and warm. No contest!

Mi neighbours Phil had slices thrown on, come off black. Johnny Morris,
gentle lovely times. Give me three channels any day , BBC1, BBC 2, ITV, and in black and white. I gain nothing more now than I did in my day.
I know I may well be an old dog, but they were good days and people bothered.
Now when you get old you become a oh well, or like a long abandoned bicycle you can now barely see amongst tangled weeds, when once , being given to a child either as reward or gift, brought only excitement and pure jumping delight.. I have to stop looking into the flames of my fire and my winged back chair, it may be old, but far too comfortable for the modern world. Did I put on my slippers or not? The fire will do ,
head back, goodnight world.. What's that prayer again Lord? If I die before...

As I said before, my coal fire is still lit the day after, so when I get up 7am everyday the room is still cosy and warm. If there was a power cut your central heating stops, but mine is lovely and warm.
Time for my toast yippee.

Yes and Chestnuts. Believe me coal is king. I also burn logs around this time of year, it's so christmasy watching TV with the flames flickering. All the best.

Expat keep looking into the flames - there's nothing nicer and better than the telly apart from one or two good dramas. Don't forget channel 81 though there's quite a few goodies on there harking back to the past - you will be surprised! I watch that channel more than any other - all the old films and UXB is back from the 70's but set in wartime. Mind you don't 'take off' in that winged chair!

A nice comforting read Xpat . . . although the horizontal and vertical hold switches of the old b/w TV channels could sometimes be a bit fidgety . . . and slices clod simply onto their fire by your neighbours . . . erm?


'If I die before I wake,'
I pray to God? my soul to take.

TalkingPics: Yeah, some gradely films on there. I'm not quite sure on which channel/s I'd recently enjoyed watching The Human Jungle, and Day of the Triffids, again, but I easily remembered Herbert Lom's efficient assistant Jennifer ('another first-name that seems to have fallen out of fashion') and, also, Triffids's early scene, which shows the watchman settling down for his stint in the greenhouse and unaware that he's being crept upon by a Triffid, . . . Agh!
Ah, yes, another film that I enjoyed watching recently is Night of the Demon, in which a 'most unusual' séance is performed ('about 1hr 10mins in'); I've never heard Cherry Ripe performed so hauntingly beautiful before, nor since. But I do wish that TalkingPics would give Quatermass and the Pit ('1958-59') another airing - even if it's only to watch that terrifying moment when Sladden, while gathering his tools inside of the 'pod' at the end of his stint is scared out of his wits, . . . Agh!
Now where's my Pobs?

I like the 'frightfully' good films,with the 'old boy' types with the 'stiff upper lips - ' as far removed from Scholes as could be! Old film stars long since forgotten but vaguely remembered. ( Marius Goring, David Farrer, Patricia Roc el al....). Sometimes set in German Stalags or even Boys Public Schools! A world long forgotten! ;0))