Middle Ainton Part 5

A Memory of Middle Rainton.

Nearly every house had an outside brick coal shed, as this was the only method of heating and cooking.
Most houses had a short set of about 2-3 steps in the middle due to the slope of the land they were built on, therefore the front of the houses were about 3ft higher than the backs. Some houses had their own toilet (or Netty) as we called it, others shared a small block between several houses and some had a “midden”, a toilet block with an enclosed area behind to throw your rubbish in. All of these were separate from the houses.

Employment

Some of the men worked on the farms which were much more labour intensive in those days and the wages were far less than those earned by miners, who didn’t earn a great sum themselves. The corn was cut and tied into sheaves with a binder pulled by a horse or tractor. The machine had horizontal wood slats that rotated the corn stalks onto the blades. The labourers then stood these into stooks to dry before collecting them up to build a corn stack. When the time came to thresh the corn, great fun was had by all! This was done by a huge threshing machine, driven by a large belt from the tractor. By law you were required to put an 8ft net all around to catch the rats as they came out – we took along fox terriers and other dogs to kill the rats – they could certainly jump to catch them which was as well since the rats appeared to jump 6ft!

The farmer sold fresh milk to the community; the rest was put into large milk churns, taken on a trailer to the main road, and placed onto a raised platform for collection. When it was collected empty churns were left on the platform for the process to be repeated.
Potato picking also provided employment. We were given two weeks off school to help with this and were paid about 4/6d per day (22 ½ p). It was hard, backbreaking work and a lot of the womenfolk used to do it. The picked potatoes were put into a potato pit, which resembled a very small, long stack. This was covered with straw and then soil to protect them from the rain and frost, a trench was dug around for drainage and they were kept until required.

The mines worked 24 hours a day, so the pitmen worked shift work that changed over every few weeks. There were 3 shifts, 6am-2pm (early), 2pm-10pm (back shift), 10pm-6am (nights). I can remember the pitmen who were going to work walking down the hill to The Meadows pit full of banter, and the shift who had just finished work, coming back up the hill tired, quiet, and black from coal dust. There were no baths at the pithead until the mid 1950's.
No working clothes were given, you found what you could of your own, so everyone was dressed different, but they all looked the same when covered in coal dust, all that was provided was a safety helmet and lamp. Each man had a brass pit check, with his own colliery and number stamped on it, you handed in the check for your lamp, and so if your check was on the board, then you were at work,

The coal merchant called Stevenson could be found at the bottom end of Back Row. He had two lorries and two brothers ran the business. Their father, “Old Man Stevenson”, must have been some sort of engineer as he built a small steam train with carriages. The train stood about 18” high and was about 30” long and when run on coal it would pull the carriages around the streets.

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