Coal hole plate

While researching this image, I discovered that someone collecting coal hole plates is called an operculist. A footnote in a 1965 book (first published in 1929) and able to be read online here says:

The Latin word operculum means a cover, covering or lid, and is used by zoologists as a name for the plate over the entrance to a mollusc’s shell or for the apparatus that protects the gills of a fish. Perhaps it is a somewhat pedantic word for the homely coal plate. But since it was Dr. Shepherd Taylor’s choice we will, in the present work, retain it.


So, I've learned something new today. I have often wondered if I should keep a photo record of the plates I see when walking around. Maybe I will. In our street, people are reintroducing ornamental coal hole covers in the path before the front door. It's a thing.

Today was the first in-house Tuesday since the office move to Pimlico. I walked from Victoria station in the morning and discovered that the vegetarian restaurant Mildred's is round the corner. Nom! The office itself is more cramped than the modern one, but has an older charm that was missing. We choose our desk each time and today one colleague and I were in the naughty corner for not booking early enough. We had to sit away from our team in another department's area. Inadvertently, we'd made the manager of that team sit away from his immediate colleagues because he'd booked even later than us – a domino effect. I found all the changes quite headache-inducing, but that might just be the fluorescent lights. We got free keep cups, so that made my headache go away a little.