One stink pole … a dead king and heaps of pictures ….. thanks Leicester for the stories

 Every city deserves a bit of quirky street furniture.

Leicester, 2019

And here is a picture  which links our Polly and Josh’s home with my own childhood home.

I could have chosen that photograph of Richard 111 or the clock tower, but instead I chose the stink pole on Westcoates Drive.

Of which there are a number which stand like sentinels along the road.

You can find them in many suburbs of towns and cities.

Ours in Peckham was tall made out of iron and was always painted a pale green although the one in Plumstead is more a pale blue. But I digress.

They were for venting the sewers of the more obnoxious and even dangerous gasses which could accumulate down below. I suppose they are still necessary today.

I expect they help date the area.  One source I read suggested that they were erected in the years after the Great London Stink in 1858. They were particularly necessary in hilly areas where gas could get trapped in pockets, and both my bit of Peckham and Colin’s Plumstead and Westcoates Drive are built on hills.

And at least one chap got in on the act and in 1895.  Joseph Edmund Webb, of Birmingham, patented the “Webb’s Patent Sewer Gas Destructor" in March 1895. At its top, behind a glass, burned a small flame from the town’s gas supply. This acted as a chimney, drawing the sewer gas up to the flame, where it was ignited, thus illuminating the street. The cleverness of Mr Webb’s patent was the way it regulated the supply of sewer gas.

Leicester, 2019

North Tyneside council has restored ten in Whitley Bay and Monkseaton. Blyth council has restored five. Sheffield, though, is the capital of the destructor.

Peckham, 2008

It was built on seven hills, so there were lots of folds and u-bends in its sewer system in which to trap gas.

From 1914 to 1935, it installed 84 destructors, of which 22 remain with three still at work, casting an orange glow on the Sheffield streets.*

And much to my surprise there is even a facebook page.

Now I am pretty much sure I am going to be corrected today or at the very least attract someone who knows more about 19th century sewer ventilation pipes than I do.

But I grew up with one at the top of our road in south east London. It is still there today as is the one my brother in law took a picture of in Plumstead. Of course when you are growing up you take bits of street furniture for granted. Well I did anyway.

Walkden, Salford, 2010

And just to show I am cosmopolitan I will share some other stink poles from the collection.

Plumstead, 2008

So that is it, another stink pole added to the collection and a thank you Leicester for the stories and your hospitality.

Location; Leciester

Pictures; stink poles, Leicester, 2019, from the collection of Andrew Simpson, Peckham courtesy of Google maps, Walkden in Salford courtesy of Steve Robertson, 2010 and Plumstread 2008, from the collection of Liz and Colin Fitzpatrick 

*The Northern Echo July 2008 http://www.thenorthernecho.co.uk/history/memories/3211527.Is_this_just_the_tip_of_the_stink_pole_/