Things you don't see anymore


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Many years ago I worked with a chap whose parents wanted him to have a decent start to his education and sent him to St Joseph's Preparatory School on Derby Road. Neither he nor his parents were RCs, nor particularly religious at all. Quite why they chose that school, I don't know.

 

Their good intentions backfired.  Malcolm, as an adult, was so traumatised by his experience at the school where all the teachers were nuns that, like letsavagoo, he couldn't bear the sight of one and would cross the road to avoid walking past one.

 

Malcolm and I worked in adjacent offices at Rotheras when the firm was sited on Friar Lane.  I often asked him to expand on the reason for his aversion but he couldn't discuss it. I noticed that, just by bringing up the subject, I was causing him a great deal of stress. Goodness knows what they did to him.

 

Nuns have always fascinated me and, apart from the fact that I cannot subscribe to their beliefs, I could be quite happy living a cloistered life, swanning round in a traditional habit (none of this post Vatican II modernity for me) singing Latin plainchant all day!

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Some folks only request information, which is fair enough by me. Maybe they don't want discussion, chat, banter etc. Different people want different things from a forum, and that's fine.  If

Things you don’t see anymore (times 2) A 1945 photo of my aunt, wearing a turban and scrubbing her front door step on Queens Grove, Meadows. She dug her heels in and refused to move when the

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Last year, when I was minibus driving for St. Georges village, near Ditchling, part of care home side is run by nuns. There are some very elderly, retired nuns who live there and are now cared for themselves. Used to take some of the younger and more active sisters on trips out, visiting/shopping etc., along with village residents.

The nuns used to enjoy a bit of banter and occasional clean joke. A great gang. Used to take Richard Osmans mum out too.

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You don't see any body from The Salvation Army selling The War cry. I think the other one was The Citadel or Young Soldier. 

Where has the Cockle man gone?

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I used to like The War Cry. My parents often went to Coleman's on a Saturday evening, leaving my sister and I with an older cousin who babysat.  They were both keen ballroom dancers and very good ones.

 

On the way home, they would call for a drink and dad always brought me a copy of the War Cry. It had stories and puzzles in it. He'd also sometimes bring a jar of cockles for himself.

 

I suppose War Cry is too aggressive a title in this sensitive day and age. It would have to be something memorable and snappy, such as The Pink and Fluffy Non-Threatening Inclusive  Recyclable paper for Children of All Genders And None.

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2 hours ago, philmayfield said:

They are C of E nuns in Southwell but I think it’s a very small community now. Many years ago a nun used to live on Middle Lane in Morton. I don’t know the full story but I did see her!

Yes Phil. We have info in the history society files. 

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Jill I also would wait for my parents coming home from the pub on a Saturday night, I think this paper  must have been one of the first paper/comic/quiz/stories  for children.

Thanks  philmayfield for saying what happend to the cockel man.

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Welcome Unmade Marian 

I  was brought up in an old house that use to have a scullery, it also was our bathroom, Friday night dad would fetch the  tin bath from the celler. We also had a food safe down our celler this was a basic wooden cupboard with mesh doors, but as it was very cold down the celler food would keep well. At the time mum n' dad did not have the money to buy a fridge.

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I always thought that nuns had wheels as you never saw their feet, a bit like Daleks.

Meanwhile back at the scullery, back kitchen, pantry, utility room, I remember the scullery being in an alcove off the kitchen it was curtained off from the kitchen and I do remember it having a "stone" which was a very thick piece of concrete? that was used to put milk jugs, butter and cheese dishes on to keep things cool. There was a meat safe in there too and it had cheesecloth "curtains" that dangled in a water trough to improve the cooling.

Strangely enough the bathtub was hung on a nail in the coalh'us

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When we lived on Denton street, off Denman street, we had two rooms downstairs, front room and back room which opened out to a large communal yard. In the back room we had a scullery which was about the size of a phone booth. It had shelves in there and a sandstone shallow sink. Interestingly, there was no tap ! Next to that was the stairs which were very steep. Then another door that had the coal place under the stairs. Our bath hung outside on a nail and was shared by neighbours? Said before,"Not brought up but dragged up".

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Re: shared facilities in Radford.

 

My aunts in Radford didn't have bath or toilet in the house; they only had a toilet in the outside yard which was shared with other residents. No idea what they did for a bath.

 

And I remember the stairs were very steep, accessed via a door in the kitchen which looked like it was just a cupboard.

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It’s funny, although we had all those privations it was all we knew so we didn’t feel deprived. Nowadays with advertising, television and the cult of celebrity we actually see what we’re missing and we are driven to attain it, either by working hard for it, or in many cases, stealing it.

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Just because you lived in primitive conditions, Beekay, doesn't mean you were dragged up!  Many who started life among what would now be regarded as unfit for habitation surroundings have grown up to be sane,sensible worthy citizens.

 

We were lucky to have a bathroom and toilet indoors, upstairs and my mum had never known anything else but she did recall going to stay with aunt Annie who lived in a cottage in Lambley.  No bathroom, no gas or electricity, no running water. Oil lamps and candles. Milk delivered straight from a churn ladled into a jug which was then covered with a beaded cloth and placed on a thrall in the scullery.

 

The aspect mum dreaded most was the call of nature which meant a trip down the long garden to the earth closets. Two holes in a plank of wood placed over two wooden buckets.

 

Aunt Annie, born in 1870, was the mother of Emily Ward who lived in Garden Street. In old age, Annie and her second husband, Arthur, went to live with Emily and George. It must have seemed like luxury: a wc at the bottom of the yard which wasn't shared with anyone else. Electric lighting, on the ground floor, and gas for cooking.

 

Arthur had suffered the loss of a leg but still managed to climb two flights of stairs to get to his bed at night and down again in the morning.  He died before I was born but my sister remembers him as a lovely chap whom she used to call 'another grandad'.

 

The cottage in Lambley still stands and the little brick building which housed the earth closet was also still there when I last visited.

 

We are all spoiled today. We look back at those conditions which persisted well into our lifetime and we think we couldn't possibly live like that again.  We're wrong. It would take very little to put us right back there and we'd do well to remember that.

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When we bought this house there was an earth toilet. There were also two wells, maybe three, one of which still holds fresh water. I have often wondered how clean the well water was considering that there was an earth toilet in between them! We also have an underground chamber that collects rain water that was hand pumped to use for washing. The rain water being much softer than the well water. The chamber is hewn from a single piece of stone and measures 6' x 4' x 3' wide internally. It has a vaulted brick roof. I pumped and cleaned it out intending to get it lifted out to use as a giant planter. On closer inspection I discovered that when the house was extended in Victorian times that the chamber was used as part of the foundations. So it's still there!

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@PeverilPeril  when we moved into an early Victorian house in 1981 (not in Nottingham).  there  was a twin earth closet so you could share the moment with a friend.  There was also a bakers oven in another separate outbuilding.  The closets had loads of ancient walnut shells at the bottom.    I suppose it was a nice peaceful place to crack a few walnuts together?

There was an inside loo when we moved in so we didn’t have to nip out to the walnut cracking station in the middle of the night!

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Re:- Shared facilities.  A lot of my relatives were miners (Gedling Colliery) and hailed from Lambley where some of the smaller properties had no bathroom.  Living on Plains Road and having a proper bathroom, relatives would sometimes call in to use the bath.  I remember one occasion when I needed to use the toilet but the said room was 'engaged' so I had to leg it up the road to Westdale Lane corner where there was a public toilet, mainly for the use of the NCT drivers.  Not many public toilets around now!

 

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