Sue Fowler – Funny staircase

Sue: There was a funny back staircase that was like a spiral and you could get quite giddy and the final flight of stairs were concrete and it went down quite deep. There was a passageway and there were rooms off to one side, but on the right, there was like a hole and it was like a crawl way and you could go and get in it and go through and you could look up through the gratings on the outside as you came round the corner.

Simon: Wow! Right (laughs). Was that a coal hole do you think or something?

Sue: No, ventilation I imagine. I don’t really know and let light in because before there was electric I suppose.

Simon: Right. How often did you get to crawl through the hole under the pavement then?

Sue: It wasn’t under the pavement … well yes it was sort of under the pavement. Not that often.

Simon: It wasn’t a weekly thing then? (laughs).

Sue: No. There was storage, so it was a lot of the stuff for the windows, the Window Dressers were in and out more than we were, and the Stock Controller was down there but as I said the last flight of stairs was slabs, stone. Gosh, when you sit and think about how things were, and how they are now, gosh, you wouldn’t be allowed to do anything like that would you?