Anyone remember 'Torch Burners'

[JOHN.P]

Reading about peoples memories of long ago brings back one particular distant memory from way back. I wonder if anyone can remember, as a child, making what we kids referred to as 'Torch Burners' out of clay. We would mould a sort of deep round bowl shape with holes round the sides and somehow attached string around the rim. When the clay dried out and had hardened, we would light a small fire inside and then we would swing them round to make the small embers glow. Why or how this craze started I have no idea and perhaps wouldn't recommend kids doing the same today, but as I remember, it was good fun and I am going back nearly sixty years!

[scousemouse]

....................we called them touchy burners, and I remember them well!1

[sharrovian]

Yes, sixty years or more would be about right, we ran up and down the street with ours, the clay was from behind the church (or what is left of it) at the junction of Vincent Rd and South View Rd.

[hillsbro]

We made oblong ones. First we would dig some nice, sticky clay (the sort that became available when they drained Hillsborough Park pond in c. 1955 was ideal for the purpose - we called it 'cat sh*t clay'). We then formed the clay into brick shapes, hollowed out the middle and made holes in each end before baking in the old fire oven. Stuffed with cotton "engine waste", kept alight by blowing through the holes, they kept our hands warm when playing out in winter..

[Jim Hardie]

We called them winter warmers. We used to get the clay from the banks of the stream that runs through Firth Park. We moulded it into a cube of about 3" with an open top and made a hole in each vertical side. The fuel was dried wood from a dead tree which we called 'touch wood'.

The things that used to amuse us in those days had to cost nowt!

[fleetwood]

Hi Jim Hardie and hillsbro - We found clay, fashioned it into an oblong box shape made a hole in one end, also made a lid, cannot remember how we hardened it. We stuffed it with some kind of cotton waste, on lighting it we would blow in the hole to keep the thing alight and yes we called it a 'Winter Warmer'. I think I have just recalled how we hardened the clay, we smuggled it indoors and put it in the oven.