Ex coal delivery man here ( 18yrs) it was a hard job and we delivered in any weather, if our wagon was stuck in snow and ice out came the shovel, we delivered, in the summer we wore wet towels around our mouths to limit dust inhalation, I'm suffering with ill health now but what a job that was! The hopper wagons were thieves because no weights and measures officers ever followed them just us already bagged up coalmen, I truly appreciate this vid, thank you.
My thanks to all in your profession; we had coal every year until the fire went out forever. Some problem in the back of it meant we had to let it go out for good. But without you we couldn't have had all those lovely evenings and proper toast.
Fair play to you mate, I lived in a tenement block, on the 4th floor and those lads used to have to carry it up the stairs and tip it into our Coal Bunker, that was in the 60s and 70s. My Mam used to stock up in the Summer when the Coal was cheaper and get the Bunker filled, ready for Winter. You lads certainly earned your Corn doing that job mate 👍
One of my brothers was a coalman for the Co-op. He'd go to Nan's for his dinner at twelve o'clock. While he was eating, I had to climb on the wagon with a little brush, shovel and a pail. I swept up all the dust and loose crumbs of coal then shovelled them into the pail. Nan later packed my sweepings into empty paper bags then used them on the fire. Nothing wasted in the fifties and sixties.
I remember my mother making me stand at the back door and counting the bags of coal being delivered. I don't think she trusted them, although they never failed to deliver the correct amount. The dustbins were collected from the back of the house and carried to the lorry in those days as well. Bins were then replaced.
In the 1960s we had a metal bin in our back garden and the bin men used to walk along a path into our back garden and put the bin over their back then walk back to the bin lorry and empty it and then bring the bin back into the back garden and put the bin back in the same place.
This brings back so many memories, my late dad was a coal delivery man from WW2 till the late 60s, I used to go with him and ride on the back of his lorry, he was as strong as a ox.
Coal, a precious commodity ,keeps you warm ,gives you light ,can cook on it ,relax in front of it ,power cuts you are snookered ,can’t afford the gas ,well coal is your best friend 👍
£16/bag at my local shop. I haven't bought coal for more than 20 years. UK last coal mine closed this year, so I guess price won't be going down. Germans must have cheap coal? Nothing brings its price down quite like having local industrial consumers.
Talking of HYPOCRISY: Aided by UK government subsidies, the switch from coal to wood (biomass) at the Drax Power Station (built near surface coal deposits) took place when biomass was cheaper than other renewable sources of energy, but the strike price of wind and solar has since fallen far below that of biomass. Since burning wood creates 4x more carbon dioxide than burning fossil fuels, further subsidies for this industry are controversial. In the UK Taxpayer subsidies for Biomass are to be continued until 2027, part of the 24% renewables tax, plus 5%VAT of course, on your domestic fuel bills. International carbon accounting frameworks allow emissions from burnt wood to be included in the carbon budget of the country in which the trees are grown rather than the country in which the wood is burned. Smokestack emissions from UK biomass power plants are therefore 'not counted as UK emissions'. Although perfectly legal and in line with rules laid out by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change designed to prevent double-counting, critics have described this as an ‘accounting trick’ (Clark 2023, Lawson 2023). While it helps the UK reduce its official emissions, it does not reduce global emissions and, in practice, the UK is creating more greenhouse gases to produce electricity than it says it is. NO, SURELY NOT? Most biomass for the UK comes from the US and Canada in diesel powered ships and is transported on land by diesel powered trucks. The pollution of a round trip of these huge ships is estimated to be equivalent to 50Million Diesel cars doing the same mileage Again, the DRAX, converted from a coal burning power plant, is built adjacent to UK surface coal deposits. Our greatest exponent of biomass even on his Royal Estates is our 'king' who lectures us regularly on Climate Change, Net Zero, Atmospheric CO2 blah, blah, blah.
Brian just like the dustman there was no iffs nor buts they got on with the job, wonderful workman we had wonderful workman and women in every industry ,andwonderful hard but real people and real times'. ' nowdays ????
Yup. Charrington’s delivered our coal. We had a coal cellar and the driver brought great 40 kilo sacks and emptied them Through a manhole into the cellar. Of course they weren’t kilo sacks in those days, no-one had ever heard of kilos
@@johnlawrence2757 John we had the usual coal merchants in northeast UK, Sunderland,plus our pits, and there was a local coal delivery man renowned as from our grandparents,era and business passed on to son , when I was younger going to school with his sons, and they looked twice my age and build ha ha,,well there father + coal merchants was called " Sammy Buck ,coal merchants
Our coal man was Mr Butler, despite being covered in coal dust from head to foot with only his eyes visible, he was a jolly soul & always had a smile from under his flat cap. He used to back his Bedford flatbed truck down the track at the back of our houses with his trusty Alsatian riding shotgun, then when he drove back out we would hang off the back for a ride. No health & safety then! I miss those days.
one man i knew rented a cottage from his landlord from the time he was married in the1950s until the time he passed away in 2022. in all that time the cottage he lived in had only a coal fire with a back boiler. from which he had hot tap water and hot water for the radiators. his house was like a blast furnace in winter lol.
That company W Maws is still going! How well I remember the coal man and the rag and bone man coming down our street, both with horse and cart! Thanks for the memories, stay lucky everyone.
Still have coal delivered, 1 tonne every year for the winter, over £600 now. And its now looking likely to be imported, bet the quality wont be as good as welsh coal.
Depends. Welsh coal is the best steam-raising coal as it produces the most heat, but Australian coal has less dust, smoke, ash and other pollutants. It's also the best coking coal. Whoever came up with the term 'clean/cleaner coal' never had much to do with the dirty stuff. American friends (Virginia) spend about $1000 every winter for oil to power their basement furnace that heats seven or eight large rooms via long, low radiators in each room. Oh, the Antarctic has huge reserves of coal but the Treaty Nations have voluntarily agreed to not mine it. The world is awash with coal, gas and oil reserves despite all the scaremongers and greenies.
@@flipper2392 All the Coal that Fired the Power stations was imported. I work on The Railway and it was our Bread & Butter work. We used to send out at least six trains a day from Liverpool Docks, each train weighing 2000 Ton and all of it imported and now it's a thing of the past along with all those people that worked in the power stations and that's progress, or so they tell us.
Tony11806 I was born in the early 60’s and remember the coal lorries coming round every week and coalmen tipping coal into the ‘coal house’round the back of the house.I had relatives who lived in a small seaside village and they would regularly go get ‘sea coal’off the nearby beach for free and wheel it off the beach in old coal sacks slung across the crossbar of an old pedal bike usually with the pedals taken off to make it easier to push it home.You can still see seacoal washing up on the beaches here in North east England but I rarely see anyone collecting it.I remember many happy times sat in front of a coal fire as a child.
@@Tony11806 one bag a week it's on 24 hours a day for about 4 and half months 🤣surefire in a multi stove put a scuttle on every morning between 9 and 10 mate 👌🙏🏴
My granny’s house in Belfast was exactly the same. It was great during winter as you didn’t have to leave the room to get coal. She moved out of that house in 1980 into a pensioner flat. 😂
@@jimh4072 My missus is from Belfast and she only got Gas central heating in round about 2010, it was a coal stove up until then with a coal Bunker in the back yard.
@@stephensmith4480 My brother lived in my mother’s house and bought it from the housing association. He sold it in 2006 and it still had a parkray fire for the central heating. It was in the living room and was there when we moved into the house in 1979 or 80. We had a little concrete coal bunker in the back garden too. I hated going out there on snowy winter nights. 😂
@@jimh4072 She used to hate taking the Ashes out to the yard and going out for the Coal when it was lashing down was no fun either, how times have changed 🤣👍
I remember doing that when I was 7/8/9 ish we would have coal delivered on a Saturday and sometimes the coal man would make out he’s delivered 6 sacks into the bunker but I only counted 5 Thieving bastard
I don't see very many fire-women today. But we have to call them all firefighters because of that one big lass that does shot-putting as her hobby when she's not at her shift at the Firestation😅
When I was kid my job at home was to clean the grate and hearth and lay a new fire ready for when my Dad came home from work and I used to love doing toast or crumpets on the long toasting fork in front of a roaring fire
Years ago I lit the fire and left the draw tin on, Oh boy did that chimney breast make some noise, Chimney was super clean the next day. Was I lucky or what !
I remember we used to get 20 bags delivered at a time, some went in the coal house and some went in a corner of the yard. I think it came from Silverhill pit where my Dad worked.
Grew up on the Isle of Sheppey in the 60’s. We lived in a prefab that had little to no insulation, steel framed single glazed windows, the floors were all Lino covered. Apart from a paraffin stove the only other heating was a coal fire in the living room. Was only five or six but I remember the coal man coming to fill up the concrete bunker we had at the back of the house. The coal lorry only had three wheels which always fascinated me as a youngster !! Great vid, brought back a lot of happy memories 👍
Yes watching in awe as a child as they thundered down the drive with hundredweight sacks of coal on their shoulder. They used to wear a special hat with a long flap at the back to protect them. Charring tons our local supplier.
Nothing like coal for comfort and warmth . People kept coal for a long time after things were modernised - I can still remember as a child our Coalman Ray with his studded leather shoulder-pad, his peaked cap, and his gleaming white teeth and rings around his eyes!
Gold memories.... :) *I Started off working at Bentley colliery,then Brodsworth,nr Doncaster.... :) ^Then Treeton nr sheffield,then Westhorpe north derbyshire... :) **I'm severely mentally impaired at west hull,now & have NO ties to the industry,Now in 2024.... :(
In the UK there is so much coal in the ground that it could keep us going for 1000 years or more. some of it is so deep down its not variably recoverable back in the days of coal that is one of the reasons they left it in the ground.
@@harbourwoodlandvisitor2445 It's that deep, and there is so much of it....and when Ian McGregor & Thatcher shut down the still-viable mines, many level & shafts have filled-up with water & they would find it impossible ever to get it dry ever again.
We had a coalfire till the ljcal council made ys have a boiler....still miss it ...paper sticks....i could get wet coal burning by the time i was 7 years old..ha ha love from stoke...Cartwrights were our coalmen.
I remember in the 60’s In Hadleigh Suffolk. A coal delivery man used to strip off to his pants, and with a bar of soap he would have a bath in the river.
I worked for Western fuel company based at whopping wharf Bristol for about three years back in the 60s, loved the job although dirty as you can imagine, I won a cash prize for naming a train used by us in our yard , the “ Western Pride” .
When I was a kid a I always wanted to be a coal man, at one point I was close to doing that job when I was 25, I cut trees and use to sell and deliver trailer loads of wood :) it was enjoyable, meeting new people and going different places
Miss the coal fire, since moving we have oil for heating. But after the mines closed the imported coal was not the same quality containing bits of stone & slate. Our coalman delivered in all weathers, winter being the worst, freezing snow-covered sacks, wet days meant black water running down his back. Slipping & sliding on frozen ground to the coal house. One hard winter the diesel froze in his waggon. Who would do this job now in winter, who would endure the cold, who would lift & carry sacks of coal all day?
How I would love to turn back time and live back in the 70s or before. I really despair at what we have now (2024) and can’t see life improving under this fast evolving totalitarian state.
People wouldn't do it today, when i first went on site in 1970, cement was in 112lb (50kg) bags and was all unloaded by hand and concrete blocks 44lb was all unloaded and stacked by hand no fork lifts to be seen
We had a " coal bunker" in the outhouse. 10 shillings a sack. I had to set the fire in our living room. Clear out the cinders, old newspaper, few sticks and then the coal. Once going it was great - especially for toast on a toasting fork.
I helped out my father and two uncles (McCracken Brothers) bag and deliver coal for a 4/5 month spell when I was around 17. I was an apprentice electrician, and there was a building strike, so it gave me a few extra £s. Boy, was I glad to get back to electrical work. Mind you, it made the man of me at the time! Great video.
When I was young I remember my mum paying seven shillings and sixpence for a hundredweight bag of coal. Happy days and what grafters the coal-men were.
My dad worked in pit When he was on afts and I was walking home from school I used to walk round corner and look up our street and see coal in front of house and think dads on afts that’s a ton of coal to shift into coal oyle for me Got me ready for later in life when I worked in pit 👍 Happy Days great memories
OMG they had it hard Just carrying those sacks full of coal but they never moaned .they got absolutely filfy with the coal dust .wish we had our coal days back .
Me and my old man(dad), would get the miners home coal delivery into their coal hole(coyle oyle),for them while they were at work ,or in bed off night shifts.I would have been 13or14 at the time( mid 60s)some days.we would shift 3or4tons as the allocation for the miners was a ton every few months.we would get 5bob (25 pence now) and a barrow.of coal for our own use. If we had plenty of coal, we would sell a barrow full for 10 bob (50 pence).I dare say there must have been many a collier come home glad that me and mi dad had shiffted his coal and he could go straight to feather(bed ).
I really enjoyed that so many memories came back getting a stock stored over the summer ready for the cold winter ahead there was something magical about the coal man coming round.😀👍
Used to love just how they dumped it at the gate if nobody was home. The old sack lorries never seemed to loose any bags of coal off the back of the lorry
Well done buddy , I would bet that anyone of the charlatans in government who don't think twice about put the retirement age up would not last half a day doing the job , Rock hard. !
Paid my way through college doing this. Friday nights, cash collecting; Saturday, delivering; Sunday, emptying railway wagons and bagging up. Though a mechanical grap and the Charrolds (hopper) eventually made that easier. Coal was dirty, but I always found Coke the worse. Bulkier for the same weight, (cwt), and get some Coke breeze down your neck. It spoiled the rest of your shift. 😢
Great memories of being 7yrs old in Liverpool in 1956....0ur coal was pulled along the streets of Toxteth by a giant of a Shire horse!...I’m sure it’s head was higher than our house roof!!...😂 I loved the sound of its giant hooves CLIP, CLOPPIN’ on the stone cobbles of our street....it must’ve been a back breakin’ job with those heavy sacks of coal....
SEPTEMBER 2024 Don't worry folks, soon we will all see the rise of ecoal man, once gas in our house becomes a thing of the past. Remember this they won't hold us to ransom over gas, or even electric too. 🇬🇧Ⓜ️🇬🇧🤗🤗🤗🤗🤗🤗🤗
These were 112lbs or 1 CWT (One Hundred Weight)…51kg in new money… Not like the mamby pamby 20kg bag that are available today Try shifting that day after day Respect 👍
I live in Dunfermline fife in Scotland There are a few coal merchants still going I had a coal fire in the 90s plus my Dad was a miner loved a coal fire if i ever buy a house with a chimney i would have one back again
Remember all this 50s /70s coal fire with a backboiler and range for cooking best days.
Ex coal delivery man here ( 18yrs) it was a hard job and we delivered in any weather, if our wagon was stuck in snow and ice out came the shovel, we delivered, in the summer we wore wet towels around our mouths to limit dust inhalation, I'm suffering with ill health now but what a job that was! The hopper wagons were thieves because no weights and measures officers ever followed them just us already bagged up coalmen, I truly appreciate this vid, thank you.
My thanks to all in your profession; we had coal every year until the fire went out forever. Some problem in the back of it meant we had to let it go out for good. But without you we couldn't have had all those lovely evenings and proper toast.
Thank you 😊 we still get coal delivered. 👌
Fair play to you mate, I lived in a tenement block, on the 4th floor and those lads used to have to carry it up the stairs and tip it into our Coal Bunker, that was in the 60s and 70s. My Mam used to stock up in the Summer when the Coal was cheaper and get the Bunker filled, ready for Winter. You lads certainly earned your Corn doing that job mate 👍
I'm an ex coalman also I agree 100 per cent with you my friend hard work but happy days
@@philcook7985 it was happy days indeed, I liked the blokes who thought it was an easy job and never lasted a day 👍
I miss how we used to be
King's was our local coal firm, their trucks had the slogan "they never shiver where King's deliver".
One of my brothers was a coalman for the Co-op. He'd go to Nan's for his dinner at twelve o'clock. While he was eating, I had to climb on the wagon with a little brush, shovel and a pail. I swept up all the dust and loose crumbs of coal then shovelled them into the pail. Nan later packed my sweepings into empty paper bags then used them on the fire. Nothing wasted in the fifties and sixties.
This brings back memories. Nice song .
I remember my mother making me stand at the back door and counting the bags of coal being delivered. I don't think she trusted them, although they never failed to deliver the correct amount. The dustbins were collected from the back of the house and carried to the lorry in those days as well. Bins were then replaced.
In the 1960s we had a metal bin in our back garden and the bin men used to walk along a path into our back garden and put the bin over their back then walk back to the bin lorry and empty it and then bring the bin back into the back garden and put the bin back in the same place.
This brings back so many memories, my late dad was a coal delivery man from WW2 till the late 60s, I used to go with him and ride on the back of his lorry, he was as strong as a ox.
He had to be.
Coal, a precious commodity ,keeps you warm ,gives you light ,can cook on it ,relax in front of it ,power cuts you are snookered ,can’t afford the gas ,well coal is your best friend 👍
€28 a bag 😂
@@incognito9941 You got that right
£16/bag at my local shop. I haven't bought coal for more than 20 years. UK last coal mine closed this year, so I guess price won't be going down. Germans must have cheap coal? Nothing brings its price down quite like having local industrial consumers.
@@incognito9941 £27 per 50 kilo sack where I live, 1 sack lasts 10 days, stove lit all day and warms the whole house [3 bed semi]
Talking of HYPOCRISY: Aided by UK government subsidies, the switch from coal to wood (biomass) at the Drax Power Station (built near surface coal deposits) took place when biomass was cheaper than other renewable sources of energy, but the strike price of wind and solar has since fallen far below that of biomass.
Since burning wood creates 4x more carbon dioxide than burning fossil fuels, further subsidies for this industry are controversial. In the UK Taxpayer subsidies for Biomass are to be continued until 2027, part of the 24% renewables tax, plus 5%VAT of course, on your domestic fuel bills.
International carbon accounting frameworks allow emissions from burnt wood to be included in the carbon budget of the country in which the trees are grown rather than the country in which the wood is burned. Smokestack emissions from UK biomass power plants are therefore 'not counted as UK emissions'. Although perfectly legal and in line with rules laid out by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change designed to prevent double-counting, critics have described this as an ‘accounting trick’ (Clark 2023, Lawson 2023). While it helps the UK reduce its official emissions, it does not reduce global emissions and, in practice, the UK is creating more greenhouse gases to produce electricity than it says it is. NO, SURELY NOT?
Most biomass for the UK comes from the US and Canada in diesel powered ships and is transported on land by diesel powered trucks. The pollution of a round trip of these huge ships is estimated to be equivalent to 50Million Diesel cars doing the same mileage
Again, the DRAX, converted from a coal burning power plant, is built adjacent to UK surface coal deposits.
Our greatest exponent of biomass even on his Royal Estates is our 'king' who lectures us regularly on Climate Change, Net Zero, Atmospheric CO2 blah, blah, blah.
I always remember watching the coal man thinking how very strong they must be
Brian just like the dustman there was no iffs nor buts they got on with the job, wonderful workman we had wonderful workman and women in every industry ,andwonderful hard but real people and real times'. ' nowdays ????
I did until I was 15 and moved a bag of coal like it was an empty bag
Yup. Charrington’s delivered our coal. We had a coal cellar and the driver brought great 40 kilo sacks and emptied them
Through a manhole into the cellar. Of course they weren’t kilo sacks in those days, no-one had ever heard of kilos
@@johnlawrence2757 John we had the usual coal merchants in northeast UK, Sunderland,plus our pits, and there was a local coal delivery man renowned as from our grandparents,era and business passed on to son , when I was younger going to school with his sons, and they looked twice my age and build ha ha,,well there father + coal merchants was called " Sammy Buck ,coal merchants
@@johnlawrence275750 kilos mate if you got only 40 kilos then you were being robbed
Our coal man was Mr Butler, despite being covered in coal dust from head to foot with only his eyes visible, he was a jolly soul & always had a smile from under his flat cap. He used to back his Bedford flatbed truck down the track at the back of our houses with his trusty Alsatian riding shotgun, then when he drove back out we would hang off the back for a ride. No health & safety then! I miss those days.
one man i knew rented a cottage from his landlord from the time he was married in the1950s until the time he passed away in 2022. in all that time the cottage he lived in had only a coal fire with a back boiler. from which he had hot tap water and hot water for the radiators. his house was like a blast furnace in winter lol.
That company W Maws is still going! How well I remember the coal man and the rag and bone man coming down our street, both with horse and cart! Thanks for the memories, stay lucky everyone.
Still have coal delivered, 1 tonne every year for the winter, over £600 now. And its now looking likely to be imported, bet the quality wont be as good as welsh coal.
Depends. Welsh coal is the best steam-raising coal as it produces the most heat, but Australian coal has less dust, smoke, ash and other pollutants. It's also the best coking coal. Whoever came up with the term 'clean/cleaner coal' never had much to do with the dirty stuff. American friends (Virginia) spend about $1000 every winter for oil to power their basement furnace that heats seven or eight large rooms via long, low radiators in each room. Oh, the Antarctic has huge reserves of coal but the Treaty Nations have voluntarily agreed to not mine it. The world is awash with coal, gas and oil reserves despite all the scaremongers and greenies.
Likely to be imported, 25 years ago I was delivering Belgian coal not quite to Newcastle but Gateshead, near enough. that was a regular job.
Don’t think you’ll be able to tell the difference
@@flipper2392 All the Coal that Fired the Power stations was imported. I work on The Railway and it was our Bread & Butter work. We used to send out at least six trains a day from Liverpool Docks, each train weighing 2000 Ton and all of it imported and now it's a thing of the past along with all those people that worked in the power stations and that's progress, or so they tell us.
Looks like Aberpergwm will be closing again.
I was born in 1960 and remember those days in the 1960s when they came round on those open backed coal lorries when most houses still had coal fires.
I was born in Edinburgh 1960 I live in the Highlands of Scotland and get get 4 sacks a week now off the back of a lorry £35 a sack 👌🏴
@@howardelder4411 How long does four sacks last.
Tony11806 I was born in the early 60’s and remember the coal lorries coming round every week and coalmen tipping coal into the ‘coal house’round the back of the house.I had relatives who lived in a small seaside village and they would regularly go get ‘sea coal’off the nearby beach for free and wheel it off the beach in old coal sacks slung across the crossbar of an old pedal bike usually with the pedals taken off to make it easier to push it home.You can still see seacoal washing up on the beaches here in North east England but I rarely see anyone collecting it.I remember many happy times sat in front of a coal fire as a child.
@@Tony11806 one bag a week it's on 24 hours a day for about 4 and half months 🤣surefire in a multi stove put a scuttle on every morning between 9 and 10 mate 👌🙏🏴
As a kid in belfast, remember the coalman walking in front door then tipping bag into the coalhole under the stairs. 😂
My granny’s house in Belfast was exactly the same. It was great during winter as you didn’t have to leave the room to get coal. She moved out of that house in 1980 into a pensioner flat. 😂
@@jimh4072 My missus is from Belfast and she only got Gas central heating in round about 2010, it was a coal stove up until then with a coal Bunker in the back yard.
@@stephensmith4480
My brother lived in my mother’s house and bought it from the housing association. He sold it in 2006 and it still had a parkray fire for the central heating. It was in the living room and was there when we moved into the house in 1979 or 80. We had a little concrete coal bunker in the back garden too. I hated going out there on snowy winter nights. 😂
@@jimh4072 She used to hate taking the Ashes out to the yard and going out for the Coal when it was lashing down was no fun either, how times have changed 🤣👍
The co- ho !!
I remember my mum telling me to count the bags going to the Coal bunker, in the 50s
I remember doing that when I was 7/8/9 ish we would have coal delivered on a Saturday and sometimes the coal man would make out he’s delivered 6 sacks into the bunker but I only counted 5 Thieving bastard
Didn't see many women fighting for that job .
I don't see very many fire-women today. But we have to call them all firefighters because of that one big lass that does shot-putting as her hobby when she's not at her shift at the Firestation😅
things were different back then grow up
@@noelsalisbury7448😂😂
We had a one armed coalman amazing how he used to manage but manage he did without help
When my wife was a child in the 50's a woman coal-heaver delivered to her home in Newcastle.
I loved making toast on a coal fire on the end of a long fork, happy days!
When I was kid my job at home was to clean the grate and hearth and lay a new fire ready for when my Dad came home from work and I used to love doing toast or crumpets on the long toasting fork in front of a roaring fire
I wonder how many people today could lay and start a good fire from scratch?
Years ago I lit the fire and left the draw tin on, Oh boy did that chimney breast make some noise, Chimney was super clean the next day. Was I lucky or what !
Best job I ever had was only sixteen loved it
.
I miss that era I really do.
I remember we used to get 20 bags delivered at a time, some went in the coal house and some went in a corner of the yard. I think it came from Silverhill pit where my Dad worked.
My dad was a coalman he worked for charingtons ,stevenage x
My grandad was a coal man and my great uncle a coal miner
Always remember our coalman Norman suttons coal Scott street warrington hard but simple days
Grew up on the Isle of Sheppey in the 60’s. We lived in a prefab that had little to no insulation, steel framed single glazed windows, the floors were all Lino covered. Apart from a paraffin stove the only other heating was a coal fire in the living room. Was only five or six but I remember the coal man coming to fill up the concrete bunker we had at the back of the house. The coal lorry only had three wheels which always fascinated me as a youngster !! Great vid, brought back a lot of happy memories 👍
Yes watching in awe as a child as they thundered down the drive with hundredweight sacks of coal on their shoulder. They used to wear a special hat with a long flap at the back to protect them. Charring tons our local supplier.
Yeh.it.was.made.of.leather.
Memories of Great Britain..as a kid I remember having to break up the large pieces and finding fools gold inside…do you? 🇬🇧👍
I have a collection of stones and crystals and I have a piece of fools gold.
And if you were really lucky, you might find a fossil.
Nothing like coal for comfort and warmth . People kept coal for a long time after things were modernised - I can still remember as a child our Coalman Ray with his studded leather shoulder-pad, his peaked cap, and his gleaming white teeth and rings around his eyes!
Growing up in NZ i remember the coal truck coming round, the guys looked huge to my 7 year old brain.
They were proper grafters the lads now couldn't do that proper men
There are still grafters about today, if there was money to be made at it there'd still be folk would do it.
I was coal man at 15 years old working for Jack Mc Neil for 5 happy years 😊
Happy but hard.
Remember one of my friends Father was a coal man, His name was Mr Church from Wakering, Essex, think he passed away in the early 90s
Gold memories.... :) *I Started off working at Bentley colliery,then Brodsworth,nr Doncaster.... :) ^Then Treeton nr sheffield,then Westhorpe north derbyshire... :) **I'm severely mentally impaired at west hull,now & have NO ties to the industry,Now in 2024.... :(
@@ChrisGroggyCreaser Sir, you have honest hard graft for your living. God, please bless you.
In the UK there is so much coal in the ground that it could keep us going for 1000 years or more. some of it is so deep down its not variably recoverable back in the days of coal that is one of the reasons they left it in the ground.
I live in Lanarkshire in Scotland & they said they left 400 years worth of Coal in the ground when they closed all the Coal Mines.
@@harbourwoodlandvisitor2445 It's that deep, and there is so much of it....and when Ian McGregor & Thatcher shut down the still-viable mines, many level & shafts have filled-up with water & they would find it impossible ever to get it dry ever again.
We had a coalfire till the ljcal council made ys have a boiler....still miss it ...paper sticks....i could get wet coal burning by the time i was 7 years old..ha ha love from stoke...Cartwrights were our coalmen.
This brings back k memories as a kid, seeing the coalman delivering and we had a coal bunker in garden, still remember the smell of coal, happy days ❤
I remember in the 60’s In Hadleigh Suffolk. A coal delivery man used to strip off to his pants, and with a bar of soap he would have a bath in the river.
That's us lol we used to soak ourselves in a water butt
I worked for Western fuel company based at whopping wharf Bristol for about three years back in the 60s, loved the job although dirty as you can imagine, I won a cash prize for naming a train used by us in our yard , the “ Western Pride” .
When I was a kid a I always wanted to be a coal man, at one point I was close to doing that job when I was 25, I cut trees and use to sell and deliver trailer loads of wood :) it was enjoyable, meeting new people and going different places
Miss the coal fire, since moving we have oil for heating. But after the mines closed the imported coal was not the same quality containing bits of stone & slate. Our coalman delivered in all weathers, winter being the worst, freezing snow-covered sacks, wet days meant black water running down his back. Slipping & sliding on frozen ground to the coal house. One hard winter the diesel froze in his waggon. Who would do this job now in winter, who would endure the cold, who would lift & carry sacks of coal all day?
GEORGE HOULDSWORTH COAL MERCHANT. OLDHAM. God rest you Grandad. X
How I would love to turn back time and live back in the 70s or before. I really despair at what we have now (2024) and can’t see life improving under this fast evolving totalitarian state.
People wouldn't do it today, when i first went on site in 1970, cement was in 112lb (50kg) bags and was all unloaded by hand and concrete blocks 44lb was all unloaded and stacked by hand no fork lifts to be seen
The coal man still carries 50kg sacks on his back delivering to our house.
@@geoffreypiltz271 I have not even seen a coal man delivering for at lease 20 years where I live
@@andrewiow6327 I live out in the country in South-West Scotland. There are many people in remoter parts without gas for heating.
@@geoffreypiltz271 on the Island most parts are smoke free zones, shame as I love coal fires
@@andrewiow6327 Island?
We had a " coal bunker" in the outhouse. 10 shillings a sack. I had to set the fire in our living room. Clear out the cinders, old newspaper, few sticks and then the coal. Once going it was great - especially for toast on a toasting fork.
They use to go by me when I was walking to school back in the 70’s. Never forget that nice smell of coal. Loved it.
My late Father was a coalman for a few years, something you rarely see now.
I helped out my father and two uncles (McCracken Brothers) bag and deliver coal for a 4/5 month spell when I was around 17. I was an apprentice electrician, and there was a building strike, so it gave me a few extra £s. Boy, was I glad to get back to electrical work. Mind you, it made the man of me at the time! Great video.
I used to love the patterns in the coal when it was delivered like gold
I was a coalman in the 70s I really enjoyed lt.
When I was young I remember my mum paying seven shillings and sixpence for a hundredweight bag of coal. Happy days and what grafters the coal-men were.
My dad worked in pit
When he was on afts and I was walking home from school I used to walk round corner and look up our street and see coal in front of house and think dads on afts that’s a ton of coal to shift into coal oyle for me
Got me ready for later in life when I worked in pit 👍
Happy Days great memories
Who remembers 1 cwt sacks of coal?
And the same in cement.
Yep!
@@handyandy6050But did you ever put one some scales?
@@peterburnett1661 tbh no.
@@peterburnett1661 50kg bagged, all were weighed by coal leader otherwise they'd lose their business. Random checks were made.
Proper!!!
OMG they had it hard Just carrying those sacks full of coal but they never moaned .they got absolutely filfy with the coal dust .wish we had our coal days back .
Awesome video thanks for sharing 🙂👍
Me and my old man(dad), would get the miners home coal delivery into their coal hole(coyle oyle),for them while they were at work ,or in bed off night shifts.I would have been 13or14 at the time( mid 60s)some days.we would shift 3or4tons as the allocation for the miners was a ton every few months.we would get 5bob (25 pence now) and a barrow.of coal for our own use. If we had plenty of coal, we would sell a barrow full for 10 bob (50 pence).I dare say there must have been many a collier come home glad that me and mi dad had shiffted his coal and he could go straight to feather(bed ).
Same here .Hand loaded wagons two high
I really enjoyed that so many memories came back getting a stock stored over the summer ready for the cold winter ahead there was something magical about the coal man coming round.😀👍
I remember when the coal man used to call. They would bring our coal up the yard and my Dad used to tell me to count every bag that was delivered.
Used to love just how they dumped it at the gate if nobody was home. The old sack lorries never seemed to loose any bags of coal off the back of the lorry
Thank you for this. It did bring back memories..
Used to love the smell of it.
Four of those bags for ten shillings, or 50 pence today! 1960's
I was a little kid mid 50s in Birkenhead, think the coal man fancied my ma cause I remember him "throwing in" a bit extra....
Well done buddy , I would bet that anyone of the charlatans in government who don't think twice about put the retirement age up would not last half a day doing the job , Rock hard. !
In the future this world will be scrambling to open up the seams again.
I used to count the bags of coal when the coal man delivered when I was a child in Luton U.K.
2024 - The coalman still delivers sacks on his back to our house.
Yea remember the coal lorries around,must say leave a heap of coal on street now it would get nicked in 2 mins now a days!
WHAT IS NICKED ? DO YOU MEAN STOLEN ?
@@raypeters4525yes,stolen
I remember those days
I can remember the coal being delivered to my nans, when i was a kid in the 70s.
Used to go out loaded 7:30am .Back midday for another load then back and loaded for next morning (on your own)
World record holders for drinking steaming hot cups of tea. 😂.
There are generations who don't even know about them
Paid my way through college doing this. Friday nights, cash collecting; Saturday, delivering; Sunday, emptying railway wagons and bagging up. Though a mechanical grap and the Charrolds (hopper) eventually made that easier. Coal was dirty, but I always found Coke the worse. Bulkier for the same weight, (cwt), and get some Coke breeze down your neck. It spoiled the rest of your shift. 😢
And there was the smell of coal.
Ive done it you dont have to be strong you just need to know how to lift.
Great memories of being 7yrs old in Liverpool in 1956....0ur coal was pulled along the streets of Toxteth by a giant of a Shire horse!...I’m sure it’s head was higher than our house roof!!...😂 I loved the sound of its giant hooves CLIP, CLOPPIN’ on the stone cobbles of our street....it must’ve been a back breakin’ job with those heavy sacks of coal....
The.gud old.days
Used to jump on back of lorry as kid and push bags off and everyone would grab scattered coal !!
still use the coalman in lincs
Saw a coal man doing his round yesterday
SEPTEMBER 2024
Don't worry folks, soon we will all see the rise of ecoal man, once gas in our house becomes a thing of the past.
Remember this they won't hold us to ransom over gas, or even electric too.
🇬🇧Ⓜ️🇬🇧🤗🤗🤗🤗🤗🤗🤗
Helped put the coal in the bunker a good few times when I was younger. Used to put our neighbours in for them too
Brilliant film footage
In the 50s we were made to count the sacks as they were being delivered.. Make sure it's 20sacks we were told. Don't want them diddling!!!!
Sent me right back. My brother fell off the top of our coal bunker in the garden and knocked himself out.
Them where day I remember them well 👏🏼👍🏼✊🏼🏴🇬🇧
Remember the Coal man arriving..
Mum! The coal man's here.
Been there done that for Patterson Bros, Darlington, Dennis
These were 112lbs or 1 CWT (One Hundred Weight)…51kg in new money…
Not like the mamby pamby 20kg bag that are available today
Try shifting that day after day
Respect 👍
Some 'modern' EV batteries weight about the same as 15 of those sacks!...which obviously ain't light!
A rare sight these days 😢
Saw a coal lorry yesterday oddly enough !
I live in Dunfermline fife in Scotland There are a few coal merchants still going I had a coal fire in the 90s plus my Dad was a miner loved a coal fire if i ever buy a house with a chimney i would have one back again
@@Paul-ul7dz Aye you can't beat a coal fire
Coal man arriving me and brother hiding cause dad spent money on beer .
Must be a coal person in these sad days
As a boy I can rembrr braking the large bits coal
I'm ex coal miner all that work oh shux 😅😅😅we get Irish coal not as good as Welsh doesn't burn as good