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My mother is now eighty-eight and I suddenly decided that I should try to find out more about the life she lived at the canal cottage, that used to stand by lock 10, on College Road, Perry Barr, just up from the Boars Head. The full address was 83 Lock House, College Road, Birmingham. The buildings comprised of two cottages with very large gardens, various outbuildings, a blacksmith shop, and a stable for the occasional carthorse that stayed overnight. The cottages were demolished around 1964 and there is now a small industrial estate where the cottages used to stand.
My Grandfather, Enoch Mason worked for British Waterways, as did his father before him, Joseph Mason. Previously the family (my mother,Florence Mason, then aged 10, her brother Charles Mason), lived at a canal house in Pear Tree Lane, Dudley, and the family, along with all their furniture, had to 'leg' the narrow boat through the Dudley tunnel to a new life in Perry Barr.
I have been trying (without luck), to find out from the census forms who had previously lived in the cottage, as it was very old when my mother moved there. College Road was a small lane and a stream ran across the bottom of the garden. In the cottage there was no running water, no lighting, and no toilet. The only luxury, if you can call it that, was a big black range in the kitchen, with one oven each side of the fire.
It was my mother's job, to black-lead this range every weekend. My memories were of onions and potatoes, thrown into the fire and cooked until they were black. Peeling off the blackened crust of the onion to reveal the soft succulent centre, and dipping it in salt, is something that will never leave me, delicious.
Eventually gas mantles were fitted for light, which as a child I can remember hissed constantly and gave off an eerie light. But, for my mother when she was small, this was wonderful and much better than the kerosene lamps they had to fill and light each night. When the light went out, they went to bed.
In later years the bucket, and the chamber pots, were replaced by a new toilet, at the end of the garden. This was a long walk on the cold frosty nights, with a candle. The new toilet was a wooden bench, with a bucket underneath! No wonder I was constipated as a child, I never wanted to sit on that board as I had a fear of falling down into it. Especially after my mother told me the story of how her little friend fell down the hole trying to jump from side to side, then got a good hiding for 'mucking up' her Sunday frock.
Eventually many years later, the toilet was connected to the sewerage system and the sheer luxury of just pulling the chain. Except in the winter of course, when the water would be frozen in the tank and bowl. My mother would have to boil some water and tip it into the toilet to melt the ice. Oh happy days.
Bath time was once a week. In winter it was in a tin bath in front of the range. In the summer, after my Nan had boiled up the washing in the brew house (adding a little 'bluebag' to make the washing white), it was my turn. When the fire underneath was nearly out, I was lowered into this great abyss, where I would have to jump up and down so my feet did not burn on the bottom of the boiler, and out I came like the washing, sparkling white and bright. Fortunately, I was not put through the mangle like the washing.
Granddad would grow all our vegetable and salad crops. He was very fussy about when they could be gathered in. But my Nan would go and pull up a carrot or two, then bury the tops back in the ground to make believe it was still growing. She would also pull out the middle of the lettuces to make me a sandwich, and then pull the leaves up to the middle. She would always blame it on the chickens. When it was time for a chicken to be 'despatched' the head was chopped off, I had nightmares for years watching the chickens run round the garden headless before dropping down. Still, they tasted pretty good cooked on the range, with the stolen carrots, onions and potatoes from the garden.
Granddad used to shoe the horses in the blacksmiths at the front of the cottages, and I remember pumping the bellows to heat the fire. The hiss when the shoe went into the bucket of cold water fascinated me. He also worked the ice boats, cutting through the ice on the canals in front of the long boats. Something we do not see very much now, is canals thick with ice. My mother remembers having to help her dad when the carthorses slipped on the iced towpaths into the canal, slipping a rope around their necks and a plank under the belly of the horse to try and haul them to the side. She said they had to get them out quickly before they went wild.
He also worked in the pumping station in Deykin Avenue, Aston, ooriginallywalking across the fields to get there. Occasionally, he used to take me there, and I remember the huge flywheels that controlled the flow of water. My granddad used to polish every bit of brasswork in the building.
He retired after 445 years without one day off work. Sadly they both died shortly after the waterways moved them to a lovely new dormer bungalow by the side of the canal in ABaldrigeRoad, which is still there. It was such an upheaval at that late stage in their lives.
I have such very happy memories of the lock cottage, and absolutely loved staying there. Thank goodness, after turning my mother's house upside down, I eventually found just one picture of the cottage which I took when I was about fourteen, to remember that it really did exist.
Photographs from BP 175 Winter 2007: They will not enlarge.
