Coal dust, tobacco smells and Grandma’s egg custard

When I called my dad yesterday he told me he’d met up with his two surviving brothers earlier this week and spent a long enjoyable lunch reminiscing about their childhood days. Born and raised in a Yorkshire pit village, I know my dad left home at 18, which means the memories and stories shared over the lunch table will have been a minimum of seventy years old.

I wished I could have been there with them and it got me to thinking how integral that pit village was to my life as well. How visits to stay with my grandparents were like entering into another world. It also prompted me to share this.

Grandad was a coal miner, I can hear Dolly Parton singing that line, and all of my childhood visits were to their Coal Board owned house. As with the last sentence, coal was everywhere in Thurcroft. The giant slag heap at the pit head could be seen from my grandparent’s garden and when the wind blew it left a grey patina over everything. A residue that came off on your fingers if you touched something. It could be so bad I remember my grandmother would always check what direction the wind was blowing in before deciding on whether to hang any washing on the line. If she got it wrong anything white would be grey by the time it came in.

It wasn’t just the residue that coal left on everything, you could smell and almost taste it as well. Every house in the village used to receive free deliveries from the pit, these would be dumped on the pavement from a flat back lorry. There were no sacks, just a pile of freshly hewn coal which had to be shovelled into a wheelbarrow before being trundled to the coal bunker in the back garden. I’m sure if you lived there this was a laborious task and when you got home from the pit the last thing you wanted to do was move more coal. But if the delivery day happened to coincide with us staying there it was the most exciting thing ever. A chance to get ridiculously dirty as I helped to move it. Although looking back I’m sure I was more of a hindrance than a help as clambering up coal mountain always turned out to be more fun than shovelling. Coal moving always finished with a hot bath and another of the smells unique to Grandma’s house, carbolic soap. 

In their house, they had an open coal fire with a cooker built into it and this is where Grandma worked her culinary magic, filling the house with enticing smells of the food we’d all be eating later. Coal fire cooking might conjure the image of an Aga but this was nowhere near as sophisticated. To this day I’ve no idea how you control the heat in a coal-fired oven but it was an art that Grandma had off to perfection. Roasting, baking, it all went on in there and to a greedy grandson’s mind they all came out tasting delicious. She knew I adored her egg custard, honed to just the right consistency, topped with a sprinkling of grated nutmeg, and there always seemed to be one on the table. 

Mealtimes were always a big event in her house, but it’s only looking back I realise I seldom saw her eat anything. I’m sure she did but for her, the priority was all about feeding others. Making sure everyone else was happy and content.

Then there’s tobacco. I haven’t smoked for many years but I was watching a documentary the other evening about Miles Davis and getting completely sidetracked by just how cool some people can make smoking look. While I’d hesitate to claim coolness for my grandparents, it was a train of thought which soon led back to Thurcrofft again as everyone seemed to be a heavy smoker. Neither of my parents did, so the smell of tobacco was always a uniquely grandma and grandad thing, even more so when they enveloped you in it with a hug. There was always a slight difference in the smell they left behind as grandad more often than not opted for a pipe rather than cigarettes. The ritual of cleaning and lighting the pipe seeming every bit as important as the actual smoking of it. 

To this day I can still see my mother’s disapproving looks at the ornate ashtrays they had around the house. My favourites were models of small cottages, they were hollow with a gap at the front where you either flicked the ash or placed your still burning cigarette, if you did the later smoke rose through the building and out through the chimney. If I ever saw one in an antique or bric-a-brac shop I’d be very tempted to buy one. Sorry mum.

It’s at least forty years now since I was last in Thurcroft. Both of my grandparents are long gone and I don’t think I’ve got any family left in the area. The pit has gone as well, it survived for a few years after the miners’ strike but finally closed in 1990. There are parts of me that would be interested to see what’s become of the village, but with no slag heaps and no coal mountains to climb it would be a very different place from the one I remember.

Even if I don’t get back there, I’ve still got the hope of one day making an egg custard that tastes just like Grandma used to make.

The photo with this piece was taken in Thurcroft around about 1950 and shows a shop that my great grandparents had.