Coal on the ground, near a track.

[Fat Controller]

1 hour ago, TheQ said:

But  it didn't, many houses didn't have a bathroom long after pithead baths came about, so the Wives and Children still used tin baths.  SWMBO can remember the Tin bath till the late 1960s, She was born 1960, her dad was a steelworker.

My grandfather  (mums side) got their bathroom about 62, he was a ganger on the railways..

My paternal grandmother didn't have indoor plumbing until she moved in with my aunt at the beginning of the 1970s. Her water was drawn from an out-door tap, shared with her neighbour, and the toilet was on the way to the garden. This was an improvement on its predecessor, which had been next to the 'twrc' (pig sty) at the bottom of the garden. Her concessionary coal was tipped in front of the toilet, so there was an incentive to move it quickly.

[woodenhead]

2 hours ago, KingEdwardII said:

My own grandfather saw off his tin bath just after the war by constructing an extension on the back of his valley terraced house, that contained a proper bathroom and a kitchen - no more washing in front of the fire. My dad's first piece of DIY when he bought his first house in the 1950s was to add a bathroom. One of my early memories is of him on a ladder applying a blowtorch to the iron waste pipe from that bathroom in the freezing winter of 1962/63 - a tap had been left dripping in the bathroom and this froze solid in the waste pipe, blocking it. 

Whilst not a valleys terrace, where I grew up the houses had outside toilets and no bathrooms.  My grandad partitioned his kitchen where the cellar door was (he then opened out the coal hole with steps) and put in a bath, he used some of the second bedroom to fashion an indoor toilet too.  We had to make do with a bath installed at the end of the kitchen and just a curtain for modesty.  Two girls and a boy plus parents in a 2 up 2 down with outside loo for about 5 years.

[br2975]

Concessionary coal moved around the South Wales Valleys by rail in noticeable quantities, from pitheads to Landsale Yards - which explains the occasional sight of a full 16 tonner or three going up the valley, in a raft of empties.

[The Johnster]

I can certainly justify the odd wagon of landsale at Dimbath Deep Navigation no.2; the central Glamorgan valleys were famous for steam and coking coal, though some household coal was produced from different seams.  Other inbound traffic can be pitprops, and the newly formed NCB is constructing pithead baths and a canteen, so building materials such as timber sand or gravel, and pits need cable so cable drums as well, and the odd van or covered open with who knows what inside; equipment, machinery, whatever.

[Michael Hodgson]

On 29/11/2021 at 10:10, Fat Controller said:

My paternal grandmother didn't have indoor plumbing until she moved in with my aunt at the beginning of the 1970s. Her water was drawn from an out-door tap, shared with her neighbour, and the toilet was on the way to the garden. This was an improvement on its predecessor, which had been next to the 'twrc' (pig sty) at the bottom of the garden. Her concessionary coal was tipped in front of the toilet, so there was an incentive to move it quickly.

My Aunt Betty lived the whole of her life with no bathroom.  Uncle Billy (the only member of the family to work on the railway) had previously been a coal miner, but found the working conditions on the PWay in Haltwhistle more congenial than the coal face.  I think the house had originally been a colliery tied cottage.  They did have plumbing to the kitchen, but although the toilet was a flushing one, it was one of several in a block a short distance along the lane.  After he died, she still used concessionary rail tickets to visit relatives

[Mike 84C]

We lived in rural N.Oxfordshire with no bath, no flushing toilet or electricity, just a mains water tap in the kitchen,  that was in 1966. well do I remember coming home from work and having to get stuck into digging the septic tank helped by my younger when he got back from school. And my father was the local public health inspector!!! We had a very big septic tank!

[KingEdwardII]

8 hours ago, Mike 84C said:

no flushing toilet

Yes, I remember my great aunt's terraced house in the mid 1960s where the toilet was in a brick hut at the end of the garden and you had to take a bucket of water with you to flush... 

 

I wonder if this has influenced me to this day - my house now has 4 indoor flushing toilets in total: flush mania??

[KingEdwardII]

20 hours ago, The Johnster said:

some household coal was produced from different seams

I remember some very disparaging comments made in South Wales about household coal that originated in other parts of the UK - the Midlands in particular. Such coal tended to produce a lot more smoke and had considerably more sulphur than domestic coal from South Wales. There was a definite preference for the local stuff.

 

20 hours ago, The Johnster said:

so cable drums as well

Aberdare Cables were a major producer of cables back in the 50s, 60s, 70s, so there was even a local source.

 

Yours,  Mike.

[2E Sub Shed]

5 hours ago, KingEdwardII said:

Yes, I remember my great aunt's terraced house in the mid 1960s where the toilet was in a brick hut at the end of the garden and you had to take a bucket of water with you to flush... 

 

I wonder if this has influenced me to this day - my house now has 4 indoor flushing toilets in total: flush mania??

 

Similar story, outside toilet growing up, now with 4 indoor toilets now, must be compensation. 

 

52 minutes ago, KingEdwardII said:

I remember some very disparaging comments made in South Wales about household coal that originated in other parts of the UK - the Midlands in particular. Such coal tended to produce a lot more smoke and had considerably more sulphur than domestic coal from South Wales. There was a definite preference for the local stuff.

 

 

There is a story in "Footplate over  the Mendips" where at the S&D Bath shed the Welsh soft coal used in S&D locos was "exchanged" for hard North Country coal used at the Midland shed next door to feed the Shedmasters fireplace. 

 

[The Johnster]

3 hours ago, KingEdwardII said:

On 30/11/2021 at 16:19, The Johnster said:

 

I remember some very disparaging comments made in South Wales about household coal that originated in other parts of the UK - the Midlands in particular.

I can confirm this from my own childhood experience.  We obtained our coal from a merchant sited in the yard at Salisbury Road, in the vee between the Taff Vale and Rhymney formed by Crockherbtown Jc, and he normally provided us with Welsh house coal, but there was a shortage in the cold winter of 1963 and we had some foreign stuff, Midland I think.  It was excessively smokey and dusty, and the excess dust made the fire hard to light because of oxygen starvation, and it didn't give out as much heat according to recieved wisdom in our house.  Aunty Nora, who lived in Tamworth and was sometimes visited, used it and her fire was much harder work and dirtier than ours. 

 

I became familiar with Kent and Yorkshire house coal when my sister got married and moved to Lydd on the Romney Marshes and Selby in Yorkshire respectively (her husband was an electrical engineer and worked for G.E.C, installing switchgear in new build power stations, Dungeness and Drax respectively in these cases).  They were both, by South Wales standards, a bit grey in colour and noticeably 'gassy', with spurty flames of ignited methane that had been sitting there for 300 million years or so enlivening the experience.  They seemed harder to light but went well enough once you'd got them going.