Memories of Stoke-on-Trent people - Alan Chell

Alan Chell

Wooden Whip & Top

Leisure activities were simple and mostly home made. “Top and Whip” was a game where children got as many lashes to the legs as they gave to the top to keep it spinning. A favourite kerbside activity was to get some chalks and colour the mushroom shaped wooden top so that all the bright colours merged into one as it was spinning. The whip was a section of garden cane with a piece of string that had a knot tied at the end. The string was wound around the stem of the top : and with a deft flick of the wrist the top went flying through the air to land on the small metal stub at the base of the stem. It continued spinning by lashing it with the whip to maintain its momentum. It very often went into a grid (storm drain) which cause much frustration and not least some mind bending ideas on how to retrieve it.  

Children playing Hop Scotch

“Hop Scotch” was also a pavement game. Squares were drawn on the ground with a piece of broken pottery mould made of chalk. These were found in abundance on one of the local “shard-rucks”, which were tips of waste material from the pottery factories of which there were many. 

Nearly all of the games we played were simple and caused no real aggravation to the neighbours with perhaps the exception of “Rosy Apple” which was played by knocking at the door or ringing the door bells and promptly running away to hide around the nearest corner, laughing at the frustrated resident. Another annoying trick was to get a drawing pin, a long length of black cotton and a button. The drawing pin was pushed partly home at the top of the window frame. The button was tied onto the end of the thread and the thread looped over the drawing pin. We unwound the thread and disappeared. The cotton was gently pulled from the safety of our around-the-corner hideout. This game was played in the hours of darkness so that the cotton could not be seen. The owner of the house was unable to see exactly what was happening as the button tapped on the window. We had hours of wicked amusement and hysterical laughter.

 One of the more foolhardy practices was to take a copper halfpenny, exactly one inch across, place it on a railway line and let the train pass over it. This enlarged the coin to the size of a penny which was half as big again as the original coin. This practice was only carried out on the train that carried coal to and from Deep Pit , to Shelton Bar, and moved very slowly, it could be seen and heard and so did not present any danger. As children we thought that because the coin had been enlarged in our simple minds to the size of a penny, made slot machines the prime target, it was the weight of the coin that worked the slot machines and not the size of the coin, this of course was unknown to us. The coin was rejected; to say we were disappointed would be an understatement. We were dejected as well as rejected.

...to be continued.....