1910 - 1930: Cole's Pottery, White Hart Lane, Tottenham

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By the pottery house were rows and rows of flower pots and sheds that housed the pots ready for baking. Also there was a notice saying "Simon not to be shot here". I used to wonder who Simon was and why anyone should want to shoot him. I found out later that 'simon' was some sort of clay or other material and that 'shot' meant 'dumped'.

The back garden or yard of the pottery house, Tentdale, with the stacks of pots behind the family group (Back, L to R: Rosa Ellis (then Luetchford); Elizabeth Caroline Ellis (then Cole); unknown; unknown; Florence Maria Bartlett (then Cole). Middle row: Herbert James Claud Cole; unknown; Elizabeth Blunden (then Ellis); James Reedman Cole. Front row, Jim Cole; Ted Cole; Frederick Cyril Luetchford and Florence Edith Cole.

In a little lane outside was the office. The only time I went inside the office was to take E G a cup of coffee, which I didn’t enjoy at all. I had been told by one of my grandparent's daughters, my Aunt Em, not to spill the coffee. However, this was quite a feat because the road was not made up. Also E G was rather forbidding. There was a large map of England on the office wall for the deliveries, and he asked me where a particular place was and, sorry to say, I did not know. That was the end of me. He had a good opinion of my older brother, Jim, though. Jim had brains and when he got his school report he would show it to E G who would give him half a crown (two shillings and sixpence) – a princely sum in those days. E G admired Jim because he was clever and the sore point was that his own grandchildren had their education paid for. There was no half crown for me.

The pottery benches had pottery wheels on for the men to throw the clay onto, to make the pots. These were worked by treadles like the sewing machines of the time. The pots were put onto shelves to dry before being put into the kilns to be baked. The kilns were not unlike Eskimo igloos to look at. All around them were apertures for coal fires. The pots were put on shelves inside the kilns and there were openings for the men to get in an out. Then, when a kiln was full, this opening was clayed up and the fires were lit.

There were no thermostats in those days to tell you when the pots were ready. You had to know from experience. Talking of the thermostats recalls the workmen and the car-men (the men who delivered the pots). They brought their food with them. It was usually bread and cheese, not as sandwiches but as a lump of bread and a lump of cheese, with some cold tea. There were no thermos flasks. The food was carried in a basket not unlike the baskets that cats were carried in and the tea was not in a bottle but in what was known as a Blue Billy can.

Back to the pots. My grandfather did the stoking of the kilns. Work was his life. I don’t know what time he got up in the morning. I think about 4 am. The hooter went at 8.00 o’clock to signal the break for breakfast. He broke off around mid-day for dinner, had a lie down on the sofa in the large kitchen for ten minutes, then went back to work until about 3 when he broke again for a cup of tea. He came in for a meal at about six and after washing went straight to bed.

When he first got up in the morning, he would go over to the pottery with a large spade and take live coals from the kiln to bring back for the kitchen fire.

If E G was coming in that day, he would come into the house for breakfast with my grandfather. To me breakfast was quite a big event. It was organised by my grandmother and Aunt Em. The fire in the back parlour was lit, the table laid and the breakfast cooked. No bowl of cornflakes and orange juice. The pottery house was a place of plenty. There were things such as sausages, eggs and bacon tomatoes and lamb chops. As soon as the two men walked into the kitchen, the breakfast was taken into the parlour on a large dish. There was no conversation. E G would grunt, “Good Morning”. While the men were at breakfast, we sat in the large kitchen.

E G was a big florid-faced man who wore leather gaiters. He lived in Pellet Grove, Wood Green. I only went there once, one summer. When he was at breakfast in the pottery house, he said to my grandmother, “Send one of the children up to the house to get some apples.” My grandmother wasn’t particularly interested, knowing they would only be windfalls – and she was only interested in best quality produce – but we had to go.

After the two men had gone, we had our own breakfast. The one thing I particularly enjoyed at breakfast at my grandmother’s house was porridge because it was made with milk. I loved the smell when it was cooking. Although at home we children always had porridge, it was made differently. It was rather coarse and had lots of husks in it that I always put round the edge of my plate, which made my mother cross. Her porridge was made with water, then put on a large bowl-like plate. She would put brown sugar on, then pour cold milk on. It made me think of a moat from my history book. Not a word was said of this, and I knew that my mother’s financial circumstances were different from my grandmother’s. This makes me think of one of my mother’s sayings, which I only really understood when I was grown-up:

"You have to cut your garment according to your cloth."

The kitchen at the pottery house was large and not modern. You went straight into it from the porch in the side door. The first thing that met your eyes was a large wardrobe with a lot of things on top, like tennis rackets. In the centre of the kitchen was a long whitewood table, kept scrubbed by my aunt Em. There was also a large kitchen stove with a picture above it called “The Traveller’s Return”, the sofa that my grandfather would lie down on for ten minutes after dinner before going back to work, a side table with a bench alongside with a knife box on it, a small dresser with a telephone on top, along with a kitchen clock that my grandmother would shake when it stopped. When it stopped I would be sent along to the office to find out the time. Two men worked in the office, Mr Wyatt and Mr Mutton [James Jeffery Mutton]. It was always to Mr Mutton that I went. He was a gentlemanly person. When I told him that my grandmother would like the right time, he would smile, take out his gold watch from his waistcoat pocket, hesitate and say "It is two minutes past eleven”, or whatever, but that “if your grandmother wants to catch a train, it could be a minute either way".

One of my memories relating to the kitchen is that on Saturday mornings, Aunt Em would clear out the food safe. In those days there were no fridges. So food was kept in a large wooden cupboard with the front part made of galvanised mesh to let in the air. The food kept very well in this. While Aunt Em cleared out the food safe, my grandmother would generally still be sitting at breakfast. She was a very relaxed person whereas Aunt Em was energetic. The conversation was always much the same between the two rooms. To my grandmother: “Do you want the kipper? … How about the bits of cheese?” The answers always seemed to be no, she never did – remember, this was a house of plenty. One of my other aunts would fry the pieces of cheese up and have them for breakfast. The bread was kept in an earthenware crock in the kitchen.

The kitchen led out on to what was called the outhouse. There were no windows there. It was a place where things were dumped. The roof was pantiles and at one corner grew house leaks.

The outhouse led onto the back garden. Here was a large orange blossom tree that overhung an old well that was covered over. There was also a garden shed, flower beds and a chicken run. Sometimes my brother Ted would have the job of digging the chicken run over and would unearth such things as pie dishes left there by my grandmother when the she had taken something out to the chickens. In those days you fed chickens on something you called mash. My grandmother’s had bacon in it. When my grandmother wanted me to go out to the hen house to see it if their chickens had laid an egg, I never liked it. I always thought that the chickens would fly at me, but although they looked at me with their beady eyes, they always kept away.

From the garden you could see stacks of pots. Some had a mauve-blue look which was because they had been baked too long.

The clay was taken from an enormous pit near the stables, and trucks on lines brought it up. I never saw the engine but I heard the noise. When the some of my cousins came and we went out to play my grandfather would say, “Don’t go near the clay run.” Apparently a boy was once drowned there in the stagnant water at the bottom of the pit. 

Beyond the claypit was the stable with a hayloft. To me it was a lovely picture with it the open country and the wild roses in the hedge that you seldom see these days. There was even a haystack nearby which caught fire one day. That did not come as a surprise as a brown patch had been noticed for a long time. I understood that the hay had not been dried off properly. The hay came from the fields on the pottery site. I was fortunate to be over there when they were hay making. It was lovely to watch the men putting the hay onto the carts. When dinner [lunch] time came, they would sit under the hedge and have their bread and cheese while the horses had their nosebags.

There were two fields: one at the side of the house and one in front across the lane. In the one across the lane was a pavilion used by a cricket club on Saturday afternoons. Aunt Em would take over a large pot of tea during the interval. 

There was a small garden in the front of the pottery house. Up the wall grew a white clematis that I loved and have continued to love since. One thing that fascinated me was a toad that lived under the brick works. When he came out he didn’t move; only his throat pulsated.

There were venetian blinds up at all the windows. The front door, which we never used, opened on to a large hall with a beautifully polished floor. Strange to say, the first room was the bathroom. To have a bath you had to carry buckets of hot water.

Then came the staircase with four flights of eight steps with three bedrooms at the end of two flights. The other two flights were curtained off with red velvet. The other rooms were muck rooms that had the smell of apples being stored. There was an old bicycle frame with no wheels that we would sit on and pretend we were riding. Of course we were told not to go up there.

At the bottom of the stairs was a small alcove in which my grandfather kept his boots cleaned and well polished ready for church on Sunday. The church was All Hallows, Tottenham. My grandfather had a good singing voice and was very proud that people turned round to look at him when the psalms were sung. He could read music and played the piano. When he came home from church he would sit and sing at the piano for his own pleasure.

On the other side of the hall were the two parlours. Over one door hung what I would think were buffalo’s horns. It was in the back parlour that my grandfather and E G had their breakfast. An oil lamp hung from the ceiling. There was also a large photo of my Aunt May, one of the daughters who after her marriage made her home in Australia. Later that photo was joined by a photo of one of the younger daughters, my Aunt Grace, who also made her home in Australia after her marriage.

I think I have now given you a good idea of the pottery and the pottery house.