John Burke's Nostalgia   Houses and Homes

The big difference was that Nanna and Grandad used their front room almost every night whilst Grandma and Grandad Burke only used theirs on Saturdays and Sundays. In winter the fire took ages to warm up the leather settee in their front room and it took your breath to sit back on it! Both sets of grandparents had an upright piano in the front room. Nanna and Grandad had a TV. When Grandma and Grandad Burke got one, it went in the back room where they spent most evenings.

The settee and armchairs always had antimacassars draped over them. Men wore brylcream on their hair and the covers, named after Macassar hair oil, stopped the furniture from being ruined as they leaned back! There were a few other things the houses had in common.

They both had the same early washing machine - huge green things with a lever that had three positions and looked like the gear stick of a Morris Minor. I saw one in a museum ages ago but didn't get a photo. Also the kitchen had a gas boiler for hot water. Again the photo comes from the Castle Museum, York. The clothes drying rack, suspended from the ceiling is very familiar too! I don't think either set of grandparents had one, but Aunty Cissie did and Aunty Muriel (Grandad's sister) also had one. In fact I'm sure at least one of them was in the living room not the kitchen. There would be a fire to dry the clothes in the living room! Most kitchens were only warm in summer or when the stove was on!

Though on washing day there was plenty of steam about - the boil wash was necessary! Nanna swapped her old green washing machine for a Hotpoint twin tub, but then got a separate boiler for doing the boil wash. I found one exactly like it at Elsecar Museum in Yorkshire - they have a knack for this sort of thing in Yorkshire, obviously! Whites were kept white (almost) by the use of "dolly blue". This was some sort of soluble gunk that came on a small stick - a bit like a lollipop - and it was swished about in the washing water and turned the water blue. Later this stuff presumably got added to the more sophisticated washing powders coming out. Daz advertised "a new white - a blue-white!"... Huge wooden tongs were used for pushing the washing down into the witch's brew that was those early detergents.

The twin tub had one tub for washing clothes, then a spin dryer with a glass lid for spinning out most of the water and rinsing. It had a rubber ring, like a grill to stop the clothes from flying up - it had a hole in the middle and was great for whizzing round on your finger, then throwing it up in the air to catch on your finger again without letting it stop spinning!

Vacuum cleaners existed but were hardly powerful. Most housewives had a Ewbank - more or less a mechanical dustpan and brush. When wheeled about, the brush turned against the direction of the sweeper and brushed bits into the innards of the sweeper. A lever opened the pans for emptying.

If you think housework is demeaning or hard work now, how would you have fared in the 1950s? Housewives who lived in terraced houses used to wash the pavement in front of their house at least once a week! This would be done using hot water and a "donkey stone" that was bought from rag and bone men. Whoa betide anyone who dared walk over their bit of pavement whilst they were out scrubbing on hands and knees! Anyone who didn't have a pristine scrubbed patch of pavement was whispered about by the other wives!

We had a proper bathroom with a huge cast iron bathtub and taps and an indoor loo. Not everyone had those in the 1950s by any means. Once we moved from Nanna and Grandad's, to the ill-fated house in Castleton (see illnesses and ailments page) we had an outdoor loo and no bathroom. An email from my mate Alex Dyson (see 6th Form page):

I had forgotten how rich your family was, what with an indoor bog and everything! Until I was 10 our toilet was at the end of the back yard and the bath was hanging on a nail on the wall outside the back door! We had to fill it from a gas geyser in the kitchen and then empty it using buckets when we'd done. Same with the dolly tub and wringer for the washing.

My own first house was an inheritance from my Great Uncle and Aunt who had moved away from Rochdale but kept a small cottage as a base for when visiting family. It was a one up-one down cottage, just two rooms, no bathroom, with the toilet in a back yard row of privies, serving several houses. We all had our own little room, just big enough to take the loo and with a flimsy wooden barn door. Mine had a metal towel rail with a piece of rubber wrapped round it. Without the rubber in winter, there was a danger of fingers sticking to a metal bar in the freezing cold. With the door shut the bar was so close to your face that I wondered whether my uncle had piles and it was for biting...! A tiny paraffin burner had to be kept in there to stop the loo and pipes from freezing up. On winter's nights you only went out in dire need! Everyone had a chamber pot under the bed!

Auntie Cissie, Grandad Burke's sister, had a cottage in Castleton with a long garden that had a really tall rhubarb patch. It was taller than me as a kid and it scared me to death to walk through it to her loo! The loo scared me too. The little brick building had a seat over an open sewer which was about 30 or 40 feet down. If you shone a torch down you could see a small stream and sometimes rats scurrying along. The hole in the seat was adult sized and my bottom wasn't in those days! I was petrified of falling! Alex again:

I remember going up to (a relative's) farm as a kid and the toilet was a big plank of wood with two holes cut in it, side by side - very sociable. The privy was built on the side of a hill which sloped away at the back, and under the plank it was open to the air, so everything just built up in a huge heap for 12 months and then once a year, he would shovel it onto the back of his tractor and spread it on the fields. Happy days - NOT!

Double sitters were not uncommon - the family that dumps together, stays together - perhaps... The photo comes again from the excellent Castle Museum in York and is a double example of the one Auntie Cissie had. Some had a pail under the seat. Only one step up from sitting on a bucket. The council employed men to go round and empty them - Nightsoil Men. They were a bit like fishmongers... everyone knew when one had entered the pub...!

After Dad's health scare at the terraced house in Castleton (see Illnesses and Ailments) we moved back in with Nanna and Grandad for a short while, then Mum and Dad bought a bungalow in nearby Royton. The only photo I could find of it was this birthday party shot with me going all red-faced, blowing out my candles! The photo was rather dark and despite my best efforts, the background objects are hard to make out. Behind Mum looks to be an old sideboard/dresser that I just do not recognise, but under her arm is our big old wireless set, the knobs of which have caught the flash - the two dots of white by my ear!

The mere fact that flash was used is probably a clue that the photo was taken by either Uncle Geoff, or Great Uncle Percy - who had a camera shop in Rochdale. Using flash meant flash bulbs, glass filled with yards of magnesium filament that went off with a pop and produced enough heat to melt and bubble the blue glass of the bulb!

Although there are no photos of the house, this shows the bungalows opposite which were exactly the same and you can see a corner of it on the "Transport" page, because whilst we were at this house, Dad bought his first (and second and third, if not fourth) car(s)! The bungalow was not quite at the top end of a short cul-de-sac, Grisedale Avenue at Summit. Whilst officially designated Royton it was so close to Rochdale that it made no real difference except that we now had to catch the number 9 bus to school!

How many kids today would wear a shirt, tie, pullover and blazer in sunny weather to play out? There would be a vest under that lot too! I sometimes wonder whether global warming has been going on for longer than people think! Go back 100 years and you see photos of folks in shirts, waistcoats, jackets and mufflers in the middle of summer... and that's the navvies digging roads and canals etc.! Either we as a whole (and me in particular) were immune to heat, or it had to be much colder then than now. These days I can't stand even a jacket on warm summer days - and despite Grandma Burke's sternest advice, gave up wearing a vest many many years ago!

Around 1964 we moved from Royton to the village of Milnrow to a brand new bungalow on an estate that was being built at the back of the cricket club. Our house was one of the first to be sold and when we moved in the roads and pavements were still to be built, so we used to slosh about in mud whenever we went out of doors for a month or so!

Behind the house was an open field - great for playing in. Across the field was a rough path that led down to Stanny Brook Park, a small park that seemed to be in the middle of nowhere between Milnrow and Rochdale. We used to walk through it every day, then through farm lanes and back roads to get to Lowerplace School. I was coming up to my 11-plus and Harry Whitehead didn't want to lose a pupil who he thought would pass! From home to school was probably a walk of 2 or 3 miles.

Again I don't think there are any photos of the house itself, but the front garden is shown above right, with our black cat, Chuch, sitting on the path. I was 11 when we moved to Milnrow and I lived there throughout my teens, through secondary school, college and first jobs, first love, first car and first heartbreak. Whether the latter was caused by the first car or the first love you will have to find on other pages!

Before we leave this page though there was another first that was very important for me at Milnrow and for the rest of my life. That was my first experience of playing music.

The beat group era had come in and The Beatles were taking over from Cliff and the Shadows but I wanted to be like Hank Marvin of The Shadows. I must have pestered and pestered for a guitar. For Christmas 1965 I got one. Or two... The accoustic that Frank is holding here had been rescued from Uncle David's coal bunker (why on earth did he keep it there???) and repaired by Dad. Dad was a nut for electronics, he could play around with strange bits of wires, diodes and transistors forever so he decided to make an electric guitar from scratch. He took the measurements from the accoustic guitar and used model railway lines for frets and built this electric guitar, using all parts that should have been on accoustics but it worked, it looked great and so what if the plug looked more like a TV aerial plug than a proper jack socket?

Uncle David taught me a few chords - enough to play things like "This Land Is Your Land" and the bane of all guitar learners; "Michael Row The Boat Ashore". Then I bought the Bert Weedon book "Play In A Day". Me, Pete Townsend and Eric Clapton eh? ...and thousands of others. That book taught most guitarists of the time! I stuck with it, Frank didn't. He did buy a pair of drumsticks once but didn't go so far as to buy any drums...