The “Geordie Cracket” (stool)

By Clive Dalton

Don Clegg's cracket

Background

In Victorian times and well into the 1960s, the North East of England used to be littered with crackets! Every house would have at least one somewhere.

You could find these simple stools by the kitchen fireside, by the back door steps to sit on to take your boots off or to smoke a pipeful of baccy, by the side of the bed to hold the alarm clock and candle, and of course in the nettie (toilet) to hold the candle and torn-up bits of newspaper or the Women’s magazine.

But crackets were most useful down coal mines, where pitmen sat on them while hewing coal in narrow seams. And if hewing coal in an 18inch seam, which unbelievably was done, you could lie flat on your side with your head on the cracket for support.

Try pretending to use a pick with a sideways action with you head bent low while kneeling down, or sitting flat on your backside. You soon realise how much easier it is on your back when seated on a low cracket.

When a pitman moved on, he carried his pick in one hand, and his cracket in the other (with a finger through the hole). Then the cracket was handy to sit on wherever the pitman stopped to have his bait. It was a lot more comfortable than sitting on hard lumps of coal!

Crackets came in all sizes in homes, but the majority were small. The biggest in kitchens would be 600 mm high but most were around 250mm high. All you needed was some waste recycled wood, a hammer, saw, nails and a brace and bit to bore the hole. A red hot poker could also be used to bore the finger hole in the top. Nail holes were punched down but never filled and a finished cracket may be given a coat of varnish, which over the years went from dark brown to black though heat from the fire.

The beauty was that there were no real carpentry skills needed to make a cracket as there were no joints needed. It was a simple cut and nail job with no glue needed. Everyone owned a hammer, and if they didn’t own a saw (which cost a week’s wages), they borrowed their neighbour’s. New nails were never needed as there were always plenty of bent ones from old timber that could be straightened.

Visitors to your home would never criticise the state of your crackets, which might happen with your other furniture, or the black leading on your fire grate or oven door. This was because the cracket didn’t have any status for snobs to get their noses in the air over.

The feet cut into the solid ends of the cracket allows it to find a level on uneven floors, and the angled legs help stability. The rails nailed on the sides of the seat gave the legs great strength with very little extra structure.

Uses

1. Child’s first seat for small table.
2. Small children to reach and climb on to toilet.
3. Small children to carry around and reach things they should not!
4. Child’s sledge to push dolls around on the carpet.
5. Bridge for toy train to go under. Drop bombs through the hole.
6. Fort to hide behind and fire through hole.
7. Stool for short grownups to reach things - safely.
8. Stand beside armchair for coffee cup.
9. Nursing mum to put foot on for baby support.
10. Footstool for general use.
11. Spare seat in kitchen by the fire for someone to squeeze in between the bigger armchairs.
12. Sit close up to the fire to get the last warmth from the dying embers.
13. Seat at backdoor for lacing up or unlacing boots.
14. Put close to fire to dry small things e.g. wet gloves or newspaper.
15. Rest on one or both knees for small table.

Burned legs

You could always tell women who had spent too long sitting on a cracket with legs apart close up to the fire, because the skin on the front of their legs was burned a varying shades of brown over time. Men never exposed their bare legs to the warmth of the fire! This condition was common to the medical profession as ‘Erythema ab igne”.

The trick was hog the space and pull up the cracket as near to the fire as possible to counteract the chill on your back from the cold draught coming from below the door – even if you had tried to block it.

This cold East wind started in the Ural mountains in Russia, cooling down across Europe and then the North sea, till it finally arrived below your back door to meet the back of your body. The only solution to counteract this was to overheat your front side by moving closer to the fire on your cracket as the night moved on and you didn’t want to put more coal or logs on the fire as it neared time for bed.