Barnsley was coal, plain and simple, with many of the familiar pit names such as Grimethorpe, Houghton Main and Cortonwood in the surrounding area. Because the town was ringed by pits, the coal dust hung in the air and settled during the rain. It turned anything with a hint of colour to a shade of grey. Never mind Fifty Shades of Grey, Barnsley had a thousand shades of black.
There was so much coal below the town that it had grown rapidly, attracting glass blowers and linen weavers along the way into a complete anthology of heavyweight industries. When Dad was born, trams would have rattled down Cheapside towards the seventy collieries which lay within fifteen miles of Barnsley’s town centre. There was an urgency about the town and it was known as a good place to be if you wanted work. As the town expanded, villages such as Monk Bretton and Carlton were absorbed into its boundaries as the tide overtakes the sand, before disappearing altogether in the endless rows of tiny back-to-back houses.
It was as if coal stocks would last forever, as if Britain itself was composed of coal, and with coal came steel. How could such a source of wealth end?
In nineteen-eighty-four, Arthur Scargill launched his National Coal strike. It split families and communities right down the centre leaving deep wounds still open today. In the end, logic triumphed, for coal was too expensive to mine, with cheap imports already arriving in the country. Besides, the country was urgently demanding, newer, cleaner sources of energy. Green was the new mantra, green was the colour of choice.
As I write, there are no coal mines remaining open in Barnsley, just sad reminders, like a winding tower, abandoned here and there, of the glory days to show what Barnsley had stood for. The streets are clean now, so is the air, and businesses have graduated towards a service economy. It does mean the community spirit of the mining families never travelled to the new Estates when everyone moved out of the centre.
Seventy-four years earlier I arrived on the Third of February but, as no-one was particularly interested in me, being the sixth child in a poverty-stricken home, there had been a misunderstanding over the actual date and the fact was, the family believed I had been born a day earlier than the actuality, only revealed by my long lost, then rediscovered, Birth Certificate.
This was the year of Barnes Wallace’s Bouncing Bomb and the first Bevin Boys were conscripted to work in the coal mines. The first jet aircraft, the Gloucester Meteor flew its maiden test flight at Cranwell, as Churchill began to realise we could lose the war not by the lack of guns but from the real possibility of mass starvation due to the serious increase in U-boat operations.
In Barnsley, the hunger was real. It was a time of trying to find enough to eat each day, for the family was too large and had become a constant worry for my mother. She had delivered me at our rented house close to my grandmother’s home. Gran ran a Fish and Chip shop, an essential element in the life of Yorkshire at the time, the forerunner of the Take-Away, a cheap meal for the many on subsistence levels. A bag of fish and chips, wrapped in a copy of the Mirror would have cost 6d, that is 6d not 6p.
I suppose one of the first dramas in my life, certainly one that sticks close in my memory was when I practically collided with a bus soon after I had learned to walk at eleven months. It reads quite dramatically and by the very fact you are reading this book, you know I survived, but at the time I almost died before I had reached the age of one. For some reason, I had made up my mind to cross Doncaster Road holding my mother’s hand urgent as a dog on a lead. Off I stepped, no idea of the dangers of course, seeing only the other side of the road and nothing in between. Mam screamed out as the bus clipped me but I was already flying up in the air in a parabola, removed to safety by the strength of her arms, though covered in cuts and scratches and more tearful at the alarm in my mother’s voice than in the danger I had placed myself, as I completed more of a cartwheel than a full somersault. There was a doctor’s surgery just up the road past the school where I was taken and a declaration made I was very lucky. Not soon after this alarm, there came a second incident, far more painful, when a glowing lump of coke spat out of the fire and embedded itself under my cheek. It left a scar, a reminder of those days of coal fires and the ever-present danger of young children in front of the grate.
As I grew, not as fast as many, as I never had enough to fill my stomach, I became aware of my mother, in part warm towards me, in other ways distant. I was yet to understand that with five other children at that time, (there would be nine) to look after, and Alwyn, already next in line to appear, with Jack a very sick, oldest son constantly needing her attention, there was a need to distribute love and comforts evenly.
There was a second key presence in my life. This one was frightening, a dark, brooding menace with blackened face who, having almost no time for me, would always lash out, making me jump. It was my dad, George Bird, thirty-seven years old when he saw me for the first time, and angry with it because he could not afford, or would not use contraception. There would be two more sons and another daughter, nine in total, a seemingly never-ending expansion of the Bird dynasty, only stopping when my mother died far too early. Meanwhile, for Alwyn as well as me, for whatever reason, we would remain the butt of Dad’s frequent anger.
Father was a coal miner in Carlton Main Colliery along with his three brothers. There had been a fourth brother but he had died in the First World War. Dad was born before the First World War in 1906, a man who grew to five feet ten inches in height but unlike so many coal miners he was relatively slim, with no sign of a beer belly which might well have resulted from the enormous quantities of beer he downed each night. He shaved each day but this didn’t mean he ever wore a suit or even a jacket. His brown hair remained with him all his life.
In a football-obsessed town like Barnsley, some, who like to think on such things, might have noted it was also in 1906 that Manchester United was promoted to the First Division. To all the miners that year came real hope as the Labour Representation Committee in Parliament became the Parliamentary Labour Party.
George Bird was in a reserved occupation as a miner in the Second World War. This might never have happened for he had been involved in a terrifying and massive fall of coal and rock in 1933. He was hauled out of the pit on the assumption he was already dead, as he was smashed up so badly. His brain was open, with a huge hole, and miners just shook their heads when they saw his body on the stretcher. But, he was to defy all the pundits. Clever surgeons placed a metal plate over the hole to protect his brain and sent him home. Extraordinarily it worked. He lived, just, only to find, like miners in those days, that he was laid off and he was left with a pittance to live on.
At the age of twenty-seven with two children, one of them seriously ill with epilepsy, in a tiny cramped house, he had only his skills as a miner to fall back on. The world collapsed in on him. One day he found Kitty, his wife, in tears and asked what the matter was.
Mother said through her sobs: ‘How are we going to live? What are we going to eat?’
Even George’s heart, hardened to life, must have softened that day as reality set in. Abruptly, he made the decision to ask his brothers for a loan. They obliged, and although I have no idea how much they raised for him, he managed to buy a cart and a horse with the proceeds. It was indeed, a strange purchase for a proud miner.
‘What are you going to do with those?’ The comment was rightly tinged with suspicion seeing their hard-earned cash begin to melt away in hay and harness.
‘I’ve got my allotment. I’m going to expand it, up the production, then I’m going to go around the streets selling veg. Carrots, lovely potatoes, onions. Folks round here will think it bloody lovely.’
‘Bloody rubbish more likely. You’ll never stick to that. You’re a miner, not a bloody farmer!’
But my father was a determined man. Besides, what else could he do? ‘There’s a Depression on. You wait and see.’ Dad would have shrugged his shoulders as if to throw off the world. He knew better.
Surprising his brothers, he pr
ospered, as the shortage of everything in those unhappy days made his hawking cries popular. There was a ready demand for his fresh vegetables and, no doubt, they were a reasonable price. He began to make a little money and we survived.
By the time my eyes could focus, he had gone back into the mine. The hole in his head had somehow repaired itself sufficiently to be passed fit for work. The camaraderie of the miners was fused deep within him and formed an unshakeable bond. His improving health had made him turn his back on his allotment and he said goodbye to his horse. It was wartime, there was a massive demand for coal, and he sought solace in the company of his trusted friends. I remember it as a time when I would try and read his blackened face, an ogre from hell, with red, staring eyes, judging whether he would overturn the kitchen table again when the potatoes were not quite ready for him to eat. When he was in such a state he never cared who came within his firing line.
One of the first real hurts in my life, apart from the burning coke, not his fault, and boiling water thrown over me, which was his fault, enough to need hospitalisation, was the realisation my father had a favourite in the family, his eldest child, Joan, fourteen years older than me. She, to my youthful mind was an adult in every way and enjoyed a much better, stressfree life than the rest of the family. Joan could not understand why everyone complained (quietly) so much. This gap formed an early chasm between the rest of us. It focussed me on the inequalities of life as I grew up, for we lived on the hand-me-down principle. By the time I received something to wear it had already been passed from Joan, then Pat before reaching me, threadbare. And something warm for the winter could pass through five siblings before I could pull it over my face.
For George Bird, fate stepped in again, unexpectedly as always. Maybe it was the hole in his head, maybe the beer which was more than likely. One day he stumbled on the pavement edge in the bus station. His leg was badly crushed in collision with a bus and the ensuing damage was bad enough to oblige him to wear a calliper for the rest of his life. Again, he survived, but his bitterness with life caused him, when in one of his tempers, to snatch the brace off his leg and throw it at Alwyn, the youngest in the family, who was quite unable to understand the anger pouring out of his Dad.
There was a single exception to this never-ending round of unhappiness. It was an isolated event which stood out like a beacon of warmth in a cold sea. Perhaps God made the decision Himself, who knows? Maybe He smiled that day when an aunt, or was it just a good friend, I cannot remember who now, felt sorry for me. Whoever it was, they gave me a bright red, new cardigan. I could not believe my luck; it was wonderful, magical and it was mine. It was new, that was my point. It was thick, it had no holes, it wasn’t darned repeatedly and it smelt of something I could recognise now: newness. It never happened again until I left home for good. Re-reading this, it seems quite ridiculous to say I was so happy over one single red cardigan but when you have had nothing, this was like being taken to the circus and the pantomime in the same day.
We had moved from our rented house in Carlton to the Corner Shop No.89 Doncaster Road. The stone-built house, as they all were, was coated in black grime as if the whole street was part of a coal mine itself. We were separated from St. Peter’s church next door by a steep slip road. The church was a large red-brick building completed three years before the start of the First World War. It was funded with pennies donated by miners, though whether they realised it was going towards somewhere to worship in the Anglo-Catholic tradition, that is, an Anglican church which recognises Catholic roots history, is not recorded anywhere. I would play around its stark brick plinth, not realising then how it would play such a large part in my early life. For those interested in such fragments of history, St. Peter’s was described by Sir John Betjeman as ‘…. a hidden gem,’ although, hidden was probably the wrong word, being of red brick which thrust out into Doncaster Road robustly, as if it was one of the sea cliffs at Sidmouth.
Moving to a new house did not improve my father’s temper which manifested itself in sudden swings of anger. There were no warnings. The new house was not an improvement, not a step up as most house moves should be. His black scowl had been packed along with our few sticks of furniture only to be re-opened as soon as we arrived. So much for Mam hoping the change might help.
Across the road, we could see a Fish and Chip shop and a sweet shop next to it. Lack of pocket-money of any description prevented me from buying any of these goodies, but at least I could dream, dream of a future when I would be able to call into such a shop whenever I wished and order two ounces of… (such a choice) of…. liquorice twirls…or how about jelly babies? Alongside these was a cobbler who maintained an immaculate house, always a talking point with the local wives. It formed a stark contrast with our own house showing just what care and attention could do for a similar property.
Hungry, belted too frequently, though Dad was careful to be out of sight of my Mam when he brought a strap to me, and cold in the winter, I had grown used to being smudged in soot and coal dust, as the black stuff was as much inside the house as in the street. A combination of Dad’s anger and the grime formed in me a desperate urge, when I reached the age of six, to get away, anywhere from the house. My wish was granted in the form of a refuge provided on the doorstep, so to speak: it was Betjeman’s hidden gem, St. Peter’s.
Mam never took us to church, nor did she attend herself. She would always help with the cooking for the fêtes and outdoor parties in the summer. But the church became a foil to my loneliness and a shield against my brutal home life. What our Priest thought of his newly moved in parishioners, owning a ragamuffin who sought sanctuary, is not documented in the church crypt. Although in 1949, rationing of clothes was removed, it made no difference to me. Same dress, same cardigan each week. It was the church which allowed me to escape from the noise, the anxiety, the fear and the lack of privacy. Surprisingly, although surrounded by people I did not know, where the roof almost disappeared into clouds, it was so lofty, I could easily lose myself at the back, behind the other regular worshippers who packed the pews for every service. They, from time to time, might have registered my presence with a slight condescending smile and a gracious nod of a head whose hat had been carefully adjusted in front of a mirror, before entering onto the street. How sweet, quaint even, one would indicate with her eyes to another parishioner, at the waif, a Dickensian character perhaps, before passing on down the aisle to a seat which had not yet been possibly contaminated with grime.
I enjoyed singing, so much so, that later I took to Evensong as well. It had a curious knock-on effect later for being well versed in hymns, I carried this enjoyment and knowledge with me when I eventually left Barnsley.
I remember the day the Priest announced that deaths in the mining workforce were reported to have fallen to a record low since nationalisation two years earlier. Safety had come too late for my father, though I am sure wives and mothers slept better, cheered at the news. Such an announcement in a strong mining community as Barnsley, would have had a considerable impact on the close-knit families. Do you remember those black and white, grainy television images of women gathering at the pit head as yet another mining disaster was announced? Faces would be drawn in desperation, reddened hands thrust into their aprons or tucked into tightly folded arms as they sought any news of their men trapped underground? Such scenes always triggered a nation-wide sympathy for the entombed men and we were reminded, yet again, of how dangerous the job was to get the coal into your grate.
Poor Jack, my eldest brother was trapped too. He was an epileptic with few medicines to treat him in 1950. It was only, in that year, epilepsy was brought into the public domain in an attempt to change public attitudes towards this condition affecting the brain. Jack was imprisoned, literally speaking, for as his condition deteriorated he had to be locked in the boys’ bedroom. It was feared he would harm himself if left on his own. He was my father’s eldest son and I am sure Dad would have been planning for Jack to follow him into t
he pit when he came of age. To his exhausted mother, Ethel, or Kitty as she was known to everyone on the street, it was an added worry to keep to herself every day. Dad, as with everything else, blamed Mam for his son’s disease saying she had worn corsets which had been too tight when she was pregnant. I think there might have been more truth in the suggestion that as Jack was kicked in the head by the horse, Dad owned, this had led to the onset of the disease. Doctors today are pretty clear on this – a severe injury can cause epilepsy.
We moved twice again, the second time to Park Road, a ludicrously small property with just two bedrooms and a box room. In this tiny space eleven of us had to find our way in life. Even my eldest sister, Joan, was still in the house though she was to leave, sensibly, in 1952 to be married. It became obvious to my father he had made two mistakes in buying houses, and he did not want to repeat his errors, not that they were ever admitted. Having managed to put aside some money when he gave up his market garden venture to return to mining, it gave him a new chance to buy a Fish and Chip shop, the same one we had looked across the street to the corner by the church, where I had almost been killed by the bus.
It was a good buy, a first good move for the family, for the business lived off the proximity of the Football Ground, Barnsley F.C, ‘The Tykes,’ just a road or so back behind us. We could hear the roar of the crowd on a Saturday afternoon as one side or the other scored. Without acknowledging the fact, Dad knew the shop would be professionally managed with Mam in charge. He need have nothing to do with its day to day operation. To him, it was vital to have the Dove Inn just a hundred yards up the road as his centre of life, not the drudge of peeling potatoes.
He did, however, work to improve his income, by spending a lot of time separating out his coal allowance he received each month, hiving off the good, large pieces into sacks which he then sold on. He was not allowed to do it, but it was the way in which miners could increase their small pay. Inevitably, the result was that the family had just the slack for their own fire which burnt miserably in the grate before settling into fine dust.
Veronica's Bird Page 2