How I got myself into a Spot of bother!
Anton’s choice of the ‘Spot Bogs’ as one thing he won’t miss about Derby flushed out some opposing views...
YOU never know what is going to start a debate. The brief was simple enough: select five things that I no longer miss about Derby. Four were accepted without comment. The fifth, a particular set of public lavatories, prompted heated reaction.
The Ice Factory, the Trent bus garage, the 1970s police station extension – no one argued that they shouldn’t have been demolished.
The fourth item, “The Hole”, couldn’t have been demolished because it was the result of what had already been knocked down. But still no one said that they weren’t glad to see the back of the water-filled depression in Corporation Street, where Phillipson’s building once stood.
So that left the “Spot Bogs”, as the less refined of us knew the underground ladies’ and gents’ lavatories on, well, The Spot, of course.
In retrospect, I could have nominated the electricity power station that was opposite Derby Cathedral. Or the gasometer that loomed off Friar Gate. But, no, I had to choose the Spot Bogs.
The reason was simple: while the facilities were welcome enough if you were caught short and desperate, the interior that lay below ground wasn’t pleasant. Cold, damp, smelling of industrial strength disinfectant, it was almost dystopian. Did anyone ever really pay threepence (in old money) for a wash and brush up there? And the rusting enamel sign that directed wayward souls to the VD clinic at the Derbyshire Royal Infirmary was hardly “Visit Skegness”.
But everything – beauty, or ugliness – is in the eye of the beholder. And there are those who mourn the passing of those lavatories on The Spot. When I suggested that the ones in the Derbion shopping centre provide a safer and cleaner environment, there were howls of protest from those who are opposed to lavatory facilities available “at the whim of their private owners”. Another critic, anonymous, obviously, but signing themselves “Old maid” which suggested that they are more familiar with the ladies,’ counselled against the use of cubicle number two. Actually, I’ve just re-read that and it’s any cubicle even if you’re desperate for a...well, you get the idea.
Someone after my own heart, because he’s not afraid to state his proper name – Andy Jones if he’s reading this, and even if he’s not – politely pointed out that he knows “both the ladies that were attendants at The Spot and in Victoria Street...both valuable in Derby town, and much loved”.
As I told Andy, I never ventured into the ladies,’ and so, perhaps unfairly, I based my comments only on the gents.’
However, I’m still keeping The Spot venue on my thankgoodness-it’s gone list. Admittedly, the Rings artwork that stands there now does not meet with universal approval – indeed, it has been ridiculed by some.
Maybe we should return the statue of Queen Victoria, unveiled there by her son, Edward VII, in 1906. She couldn’t sit on the throne atop public lavatories, so she was moved a few hundred yards down London Road, to the grounds of the DRI. We could put her back in her original place. Then again, Victoria ruled over an empire upon which the sun famously never set, so there is a risk that the current fashion for toppling statues might see her carried down to the Derwent. Best leave her where she is after all.
I do believe that there should be public conveniences, of course. Too many have been closed. So, the parlour game for today is: name your favourite Derby public lavatory of blessed memory. I have a choice of two: the one at the bottom of Normanton Road, handy for a visit after a night in the Norman Arms; or the gents’ that stood at the junction of Burton Road, Green Lane, Normanton Road and Babington Lane, by the Unity Hall and next to the horse trough.
After an evening in the Queen’s Hotel in Crompton Street, that facility was very welcome. The gents’ I mean, not the horse trough.