The continuing story of the house Joe and Mary Ann Scott lived in for over 50 years and the families that have lived here since.*
It’s bin day and as ever I have no idea which wheelie bins to put out.
So rough rule of thumb is to look down Beaumont Road and work out what needs to be put ot by the line of coloured bins already waiting.
Now I know I could just go online and look it up but what challenge is there in that?
Of course it was so much easier when Joe had to put out the metal bin . Back then it was just the one and pretty much everything went into it.
You have to be well into the middle years of your life to remember a dust cart like the one above or that rubbish was deposited in metal dustbins.
And I was reminded of all this when I came back across, Your City, Manchester 1838-1938, written by "the Manchester Municipal Officer’s Guild in co-operation with its Group for Research in Administration and Sociology in celebration of the Centenary of the City’s Charter of Incorporation, with special dedication to the Children of Manchester.”
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It was published as the story of what the council had achieved in the century we had had locally elected government.
So there were chapters on the improvements in sanitation, public health, education and housing, as well as leisure, and culture, town planning and the government of the city.
And it looked forward to the future, with clean and cheap electricity and gas, heating and lighting the homes across the city as well as fuelling the domestic appliances for cooking and washing.
My particular favourite is the Sludge Steamship Mancunium which took the treated sewage waste out to sea where it was “emptied into the ocean 22 miles beyond Liverpool or [that] portion broadcast,was broadcast on to the land and ploughed in helping to make the land good for agricultural purposes.”
Not so different then from the practice of our own farmers who bought night soil from the privies of Manchester to spread across the township fields.
As for household rubbish the book makes much of the slogan on the side of dust carts of the period to “Burn your own rubbish.”
Now given the number of open fire this was a practical solution and by extension the Corporation did much the same in its destructors, which “are really big furnaces ..... where cart loads of rubbish are burned down to clinkers, the useful parts of the rubbish – old tins, bottles, etc- being saved and sold to firms who melt them down and use them for making new tins and new bottles.”
Less attractive today but at the time lauded as the new and scientific way was “'controlled tipping'. Here the rubbish is dumped on low lying land and is spread carefully out and ‘sealed’ by covering with a thick layer of soil.
Then another layer of waste in put on top, ‘sealed’ and so the land is built up into what becomes in a year or two solid land.
Just as the clinker obtained from the incineration method is put to good use in road making, the controlled tipping method is usefully applied to filling up waste land, and as you will find on the Mersey Bank at Wythenshawe that a large area of waste land previously liable to floods has been built up by this method into high solid land, grass-grown and suitable for all sorts of purposes, such as playing fields and parks...”
And that I suppose is where I part company with the civic achievements because that neat new scientific solution ruined the meadows between our village and the Mersey. What had been an area of carefully cultivated meadow land became a dumping ground which raised the level of the land and destroyed for ever a unique way of farming.
And before anyone claims that this has prevented flooding close to Chorlton I would just remind them that this was our flood plain which generations had quite happily accepted as the price paid for living close to the river.
But that is not quite the end.
That refuse deposited here 70 or so years ago is still there and may not have gone away. Just a few years ago my old botanist friend came across a newspaper from 1938 in perfect condition out on the Stretford side of the river.
It appears to have been unearthed by people digging for old bottles or some other ancient treasure.
What was remarkable was that it was in perfect condition which begs the question of what else sits below the surface?
A question which the more sober, dispassionate and scientific readers will be able to answer.
I will just close with the thought that Joe just had the bin which went out each week on the same day, and wait to see if I have got the collection day right.
Pictures; from Your City, Manchester 1838-1938, the Manchester Municipal Officer’s Guild, 1938
*The story of house,
http://chorltonhistory.blogspot.co.uk/search/label/The%20story%20of%20a%20house
So rough rule of thumb is to look down Beaumont Road and work out what needs to be put ot by the line of coloured bins already waiting.
Now I know I could just go online and look it up but what challenge is there in that?
Of course it was so much easier when Joe had to put out the metal bin . Back then it was just the one and pretty much everything went into it.
You have to be well into the middle years of your life to remember a dust cart like the one above or that rubbish was deposited in metal dustbins.
And I was reminded of all this when I came back across, Your City, Manchester 1838-1938, written by "the Manchester Municipal Officer’s Guild in co-operation with its Group for Research in Administration and Sociology in celebration of the Centenary of the City’s Charter of Incorporation, with special dedication to the Children of Manchester.”
So there were chapters on the improvements in sanitation, public health, education and housing, as well as leisure, and culture, town planning and the government of the city.
And it looked forward to the future, with clean and cheap electricity and gas, heating and lighting the homes across the city as well as fuelling the domestic appliances for cooking and washing.
My particular favourite is the Sludge Steamship Mancunium which took the treated sewage waste out to sea where it was “emptied into the ocean 22 miles beyond Liverpool or [that] portion broadcast,was broadcast on to the land and ploughed in helping to make the land good for agricultural purposes.”
Not so different then from the practice of our own farmers who bought night soil from the privies of Manchester to spread across the township fields.
As for household rubbish the book makes much of the slogan on the side of dust carts of the period to “Burn your own rubbish.”
Now given the number of open fire this was a practical solution and by extension the Corporation did much the same in its destructors, which “are really big furnaces ..... where cart loads of rubbish are burned down to clinkers, the useful parts of the rubbish – old tins, bottles, etc- being saved and sold to firms who melt them down and use them for making new tins and new bottles.”
Then another layer of waste in put on top, ‘sealed’ and so the land is built up into what becomes in a year or two solid land.
Just as the clinker obtained from the incineration method is put to good use in road making, the controlled tipping method is usefully applied to filling up waste land, and as you will find on the Mersey Bank at Wythenshawe that a large area of waste land previously liable to floods has been built up by this method into high solid land, grass-grown and suitable for all sorts of purposes, such as playing fields and parks...”
And that I suppose is where I part company with the civic achievements because that neat new scientific solution ruined the meadows between our village and the Mersey. What had been an area of carefully cultivated meadow land became a dumping ground which raised the level of the land and destroyed for ever a unique way of farming.
And before anyone claims that this has prevented flooding close to Chorlton I would just remind them that this was our flood plain which generations had quite happily accepted as the price paid for living close to the river.
That refuse deposited here 70 or so years ago is still there and may not have gone away. Just a few years ago my old botanist friend came across a newspaper from 1938 in perfect condition out on the Stretford side of the river.
It appears to have been unearthed by people digging for old bottles or some other ancient treasure.
What was remarkable was that it was in perfect condition which begs the question of what else sits below the surface?
A question which the more sober, dispassionate and scientific readers will be able to answer.
I will just close with the thought that Joe just had the bin which went out each week on the same day, and wait to see if I have got the collection day right.
Pictures; from Your City, Manchester 1838-1938, the Manchester Municipal Officer’s Guild, 1938
*The story of house,
http://chorltonhistory.blogspot.co.uk/search/label/The%20story%20of%20a%20house
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