HOUSEHOLD TIPS NOT FOUND IN WOMAN'S WEEKLY

[Tizer]

Our street was given a tarmac surface in the early 1950s when I was a young kid and could still play with toy cars in the gutter without getting run over. I remember playing with tar and rolling it up as Stanley describes and I'd assumed that must have been after the tarmac was laid. But if the setts had tar between them it could have been before tarmacing too. We lived on a hill and we kids `raced' our Dinky racing cars (my favourite was a Cooper Bristol) down the smooth surface in the gutter (and sometimes into the drain!). The gutter was smooth tarmac after the resurfacing - but what was the gutter when the street surface consisted of setts? I don't think the setts went right up to the pavement.

[PanBiker]

Wasn't the gutter end to end narrow sandstone flags? In Barlick I'm thinking about Wellhouse and Valley Roads when I was a lad.

[Stanley]

Treatment of gutters varied, many were setts right to the kerb. When a repair was done in King Street the stone gutter was left out at one point and tarmacked. I pointed out to the council that this was wrong and give them their due, they got onto it immediately and the stones were replaced.
Can't answer your question direct Tiz about your gutter. When setts were re-laid, they were were tamped down level into a bed of clinker and flue dust with a big cylinder of wood hooped with iron with handles on the side. They were laid with a good gap in between and then hot gas tar was pored into the joints which filled all the gaps and 'glued' the setts together. This was a very durable surface but over time could settle unevenly. When this got bad the setts were lifted and relaid. Round here we used gritstone setts from the quarries on Tubber Hill, millions were exported by canal and road into Lancashire, Burnley, Colne and Nelson setts were almost all from Tubber Hill. In Stockport granite setts were used, many of them From the quarries on Shap Fell who made Shap 'Adamant' concrete flags as well, some came from Derbyshire. Funnily enough, when the setts in Rainhall Road and Newtown were revealed during resurfacing they were small granite ones and laid in a fan pattern, this was known as 'Durex' by the paviors. I was told that these streets were done by French labourers, we had perhaps not learned this new technique. Later stretches like the section at the end of Hill Street are Tubber setts, much larger and made of gritstone. When the first setts were laid the carters complained because they didn't give the horses as much purchase as the old water bound macadam roads. Incidentally, the name Macadam comes from the Scotsman who first perfected the use of graded stones to make a durable surface. (LINK)
One little known fact. In some major cities hardwood blocks were used, set in gas tar, for paving city streets as they were quieter when horse drawn vehicles passed over them. During the war, when fuel was short, these were very handy for the poor after a bomb disrupted the surface. The lads were soon in there pinching them to keep the home fires burning! I was told that one block kept a good fire going for a long time.

[Tizer]

A useful potted history of setts...thanks! My dad says many of the kerbstones when he was a lad were broken at the corner of streets due to the steam-powered lorries running over them.

[Wendyf]

Tiz, your post made me think of this picture....more than the kerbstones damaged on this occasion!



Nuttalls steam lorry accident at the top of Newmarket Street in Colne.

[Stanley]

Nice pic Wendy.... at least he left the entrance to the building clear! There were always young lads in these pictures viewing the scene...
Kaolin. (LINK) is very fine china clay and has many uses. When I was a lad the main domestic ones were as a hot paste made with water which was used as a poultice and also as an ingredient in Kaolin and Morphine, a sovereign cure for severe diarrhoea. The Morphine stopped the stomach spasms and the kaolin bound the gut contents together.
I note from a current advertisement for a deodorant that it is now a miracle ingredient that leaves the underarm skin silky smooth. In effect a very fine coat of whitewash!

[Tizer]

Wendy, a very fine photo! Nuttalls became Matthew Brown, Lion Brewery, Blackburn, and there are some relevant photos on this web page:
[Sorry I gave the wrong link the first time - here is the correct one! Thanks for pointing it out Wendy.]
http://www.blackburnpast.com/2011/05/li ... rwood.html

Kaolin is the name of the mountain in china from were the clay was imported into Britain before William Cookworthy discovered it in Cornwall. He happened to find it on Tregonning Hill behind Praa Sands but much bigger deposits were soon found near St Austell, hence the `Cornish Mountains' as they are called locally (the great pyramids of quartz waste product from china clay manufacture).

[Tizer]

With all this talk of setts and flagstones it reminds me that Mrs Tiz recently went to the Lake District (geology at Blencathra!) and amongst the things she brought back was (no, not a flagstone) details of Threlkeld Quarry. It says "The stone was used by the Manchester Corporation Waterworks for their Thirlmere scheme, for railway ballast for the Crewe-Carlisle line, for roadstone, kerbing and for facing buildings with dressed stone." There's lots more interesting information on this web page:
http://www.threlkeldquarryandminingmuse ... k/history/

[Stanley]

The railways opened up the quarries, very similar story to the Welsh slate industry. Coniston green slate was reckoned to be the very best roofing slate and though expensive was used on high class buildings. Some of the furthest travelled stone was the dark pink aggregate from Lanarkshire. I think it was used for the tarmac on the Mall in London.

[David Whipp]

John Broughton recounted a tale about the old telephone exchange on Kelbrook Road (now the Scottish Presbyterian's building).

Two different colours of slate were supplied when it was roofed to create a 'chess board' pattern.

No one told the roofers; they used one sort of slate on the southern slope and the others on the north...

[Tizer]

...which was a good decision, rather than doing it in random patches which would have looked like bits had been badly replaced at intervals.

[Stanley]

Patterns on roofs used to be quite common. Round or diamond shaped bottoms on some slates.
Noted a double line of setts used as the gutter revealed in Butts after the planing. Bit rough for model cars though.
When your flock mattress gets lumpy take it to the local mill or mattress shaker who will process the flocks in a willow and clean them to separate the fibres before re-stuffing the tick cover.



The Willow or flock-shaker at Helmshore museum. This one was actually used for renovating mattresses.

[Tizer]

Following on from Wendy's steam lorry accident, here is a steam lorry transporting a GWR railway coach through Bridgwater in 1933. The coach was bought by a farmer and he made it into a bungalow. I photographed this item in the museum of the the West Somerset Railway, Bishops Lydeard station.

[Stanley]

At one time you could find redundant railway carriages in the strangest places. There used to be a Pulman Dining Car at Rochdale that was used as an extension for a pub and used as a restaurant. Do you remember the one in the Titfield Thunderbolt?

[Tripps]

I was going to mention that, but you beat me to it.
It was the Yew Tree pub, on Oldham Road. Here's a link Yew Tree Pulman

[Stanley]

Thanks for that David. Glad to see it was resurrected yet again!

[Stanley]

One household activity which has completely vanished was the sight of someone on their hands and knees scrubbing the floor with a specially made scrubbing brush. It had very stiff bristles and at one end they splayed out so that you could get right up to a corner. Soap and soda were the common cleansers used and you could also get long handled 'deck scrubbers'.

[Big Kev]

I have a deck scrubber. Very efficient on the tiled floor in the cellar.

[Bodger]

Did you meet her in Portsmouth ?

[Tizer]

Bodge must have watched that `Coast' programme on TV where Ruth Goodman spelled out (in too much detail) what the troopships brought back to Portsmouth when the Crimean War ended.

[Stanley]

I have a strange aversion to Ruth Goodman, Alex Langland and Her with the Teeth (Odoni?) Probably goes back to the dissolution of the Time Team.

[Stanley]

My mother had a belief that sprinkling salt on the fire helped keep soot levels down in the flue. Her other strategy was to 'sweel' the chimney about once a month. To do this you gate a good fire going and then insert crumpled newspaper in the throat of the flue where it burst into flamer and shot up the chimney. I used to go outside and watch the burst of ash and soot out of the chimney top. Problem was that if you didn't do it regularly you could start a chimney fire and that was exciting! Never happened to us but you couldn't miss one, black smoke and red flames leaping out of the pot which often cracked under the heat. Kids don't know what they are missing these days.....

[Sue]

My dad used to do that Stanley. It used to scare my Mum silly!

[Stanley]

Exciting stuff. We used to play a game called 'devil up a spout'. The trick was to get access to a mill with large cast iron fall pipes from the gutters, sometimes five stories high. You crumpled some newspaper up, put it in the pipe and lit it. If you got it right the draught grabbed it and it shot up the pipe with a loud droning noise and a shower of sparks came out at the top. I know, we shouldn't encourage kids to try it......

[Bodger]

Espcially with plastic downspouts ?