Here you go Ged, taken from my story to my grand kids about my time as a kid. Its a discription of our back kitchen, which also was a cellar.
Inside the back kitchen on the back wall of the house was a window that was similar in size to the front cellar window; again the top third of the window was above ground and the other two thirds below ground. In front of this window on the outside a section of the ground was cut away to about two feet wide to allow a little more light into the back kitchen. This section was known as and called the ‘area’; Looking out from the back kitchen window, the back yard was about eye level to a person of average height. In the back kitchen, in the corner to the right of the window was a cold water tap set in the wall and a stone sink below. The sink was made from York stone same as the paving stones! The sink was set into the wall about waist high and was about twenty-eight inches square and about four inches thick. The depth or trough of the sink was only about two inches deep with a small grid about three inches diameter, (no plugs on a chain in those days.) There was always a bowl in the sink for washing the dishes and to catch the splashes from the water tap. The whole family had to have their daily wash at this one cold-water tap. If you wanted hot water it had to be heated with a pan placed on a gas ring of the cooker. Under the window and next to the sink stood a small kitchen table with a plastic tablecloth to cover it. Most of the dishes and crockery for day-to-day use was placed here.
To the left of the window on the opposite corner was a set of shelves for other dishes and crockery; the shelves were recessed into a gap between the back wall and the chimneybreast.
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(I remember on the middle shelf was a set of three different sized jugs, angular and oblong in shape with a scene of a coach and horses on each side. Over the years they gradually disappeared through breakage.)
On the other side of the chimneybreast two cupboards were fitted into the recess between the chimneybreast and the wall dividing the front and back kitchens. ** Set into the chimneybreast, instead of a fireplace was a brick built boiler about four foot square and about three foot high, set into the centre of the brickwork was a circular iron bowl or cauldron about eighteen inches deep and about two foot diameter, for washing clothes, underneath this was a small iron fire grate to heat the water in the bowl. I don’t remember the boiler being lit very often, because public washhouses were more practical for washing clothes for the working class families of the time. (The one time I do remember it being used was in the sever winter of 1947 when it was too difficult for mam to take the washing to the washhouse, due to the snow and ice. Then the back kitchen was like ‘Dante’s Inferno’ with the flames from the fire under the boiler, the smoke from the fire not drawing up the chimney due to lack of use, and the steam from the washing in the boiler, steaming up the windows. I don’t know how mam coped with it all.)Opposite the chimneybreast was the gas cooker made of cast iron in the traditional style of the day, it was like a large safe on legs with a door in the front with a fastening like a back door latch. (This style of gas cooker was based on an original design which I believe was first produced in Birkenhead and lasted well into the sixties, until the trendy, pastel coloured enamel cookers became the order of the day.) You still see this design in large kitchens of old hotels.
To the left of the door into the kitchen; against the wall facing the window was a small kitchen table with a drop leaf, on top of the table was a small cupboard with a door on the front, covered with a galvanised mesh screen. This cupboard, which was always known as the ‘safe’ was used for keeping food under cover, (most food for meals was bought fresh and cooked and eaten on the same day, it was not left long enough to go bad or off!) This room also had a gas bracket for lighting but this was fixed to the wall alongside the window and near to the sink. In this small, damp back room, Mam had to cook and wash clothes for five kids, Dad and herself! There were seven in our family, Mam, Dad, my sister who was the eldest, two brothers older than me, and one younger brother.
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