As a toddler in Ashington, Northumberland, I can remember the day shift miners coming home in the late afternoon covered in black coal dust. No pithead showers in those days and no bathroom at home. They would have a bath in a tin tub, laboriously filled from kettles, in front of the fireplace.

The miners' rented houses didn't get bathrooms until the 1960s, when the backyards were converted and made into part of the houses, just a few years before Neil Armstrong walked on the Moon.