Left: Ivy Batten, Tom (Tony) Batten, Daisy Batten, Dorothy Batten, Right Ivy as a young girl

Going back to my school days again I remember the first piece of long poetry that I learnt in the infant’s school, I said it many times to Dorothy, Daisy and Clive when they were little children.

Come little leaves said the wind one day,
Come over the meadows with me and play.
Put on your dresses of red and gold,
For summer is gone and the days grow cold.
As soon as the winds heard
As soon as the leaves heard the winds loud call
Down they came fluttering one and all.
Over the merry brown fields they danced and flew,
Singing the soft little songs they knew,
Ah cricket goodbye we've been friends so long,
Ah little brook sing us your farewell song,
Say you're sorry to see us go,
Ah you'll miss us right well we know,
For dear little lambs in their fleece,
Fowl will be covered in ice and now.
Ah little brook you'll miss us right well we know.

I remember we had to do a map of England and I got all my answers right. I remember being in lots of concerts and plays we used to love dressing up. We used to take our lunch to school every day and sometimes I would help to clean out the lunch cupboard and. finding lots of big crusts that the children couldn’t eat because there was no butter on them.
Everybody seemed to have big families then as many as 10, 12, 14, we had a family of 10 children ourselves. Mum and Dad always kept a good table we used to run home from school to tea, there was always a good tea waiting, a great big saucepan of lamb stew and a big rice pudding in the oven, sometimes roast chicken, sometimes beef stew with lots of dumplings. Dad, on a Saturday night would come home from the butchers half a side of lamb or big shins of beef, cow heads and big strings of sausages, Mother used to make lovely brawns, the butchers would sell their meat cheap on Saturday nights as they had no cold storage or fridges in those days. After Mother had done the washing I used to scrub out the boiler and fill it with water from the well so that Mother could cook the big roly poly (suet pudding) about a yard long. We used to heat up the baking oven every week with long sticks, and I used to help Mother make the dough into bread or rolls and lardy cakes big ones and small ones, we used to love them hot.
I left school at 14 and stayed at home a couple of years to help Mother. I helped with the washing which took all day as we had to dolly the washing in a big tub, a cider barrel, cut through in half, we had to dip up the water from the well and carry it by the bucket full and then wash the clothes all by hand. It was long hard work especially as there was 12 of us and my Dad and brothers worked in the coalmines, their clothes were, very dirty and oily from the coal. When they came home they were as black as niggers, you could only tell them by their voices not their faces. The washing boiler would be put on ready for them to have a bath, and a lovely cooked tea waiting Then Mother or I would wash their moleskin trousers or corduroy and hang them on the clothes line, then beat them with a stick and leave them to dry and then bring them in to air by the fire. Sometimes they needed patching, so Mother would put on her old sack apron and sew for hours. I had to wash out their Tommy bags, which Mother had made for them out of blue check, also I had to fill a quart Tommy bin full of tea ready and help to cut their sandwiches. We never went to bed before 11o’clock and then Mother was up again at 5 to get them all up for work, she always had a fire, to come down to and breakfast ready of bacon and eggs.| Previous Page | Next Page |

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