Who do you stink you are?
North Staffordshire historian MERVYN EDWARDS looks back at some of the smells – both good and bad – of the area’s past
EVERYONE’S talking about the Silverdale ‘stench’ at the moment, and having had my own nostrils assailed by the whiff, I can well understand why.
It has prompted me to consider some of the more honking history of North Staffordshire this week – not that I am a “smell historian” like Dr William Tullet of Cambridge who has declared publicly that smells
“deserve their place in history.”
The academic has been in the vanguard of efforts to recreate scents that mimic the chemical and manufacturing processes of the Industrial Revolution.
On a much smaller scale, this has been attempted at Longton’s Gladstone Pottery Museum, where the sounds and smells of the poorly-sanitised Potteries of yesteryear are replicated around a mock-up of a pig in a dusty yard and adjacent privies.
Feedback on Tripadvisor suggests that this attack on our olfactory senses has been successful in conveying some of the pong of the Potteries past.
However, it barely comes close to reproducing the stinky Stoke of the 19th century and the era of ashpits, night soil men, cesspools and Rochdale pails – pans that were emptied only weekly.
Sewage farms were part of the answer to this problem but didn’t exactly smell like climbing honeysuckle themselves.
Various pockets of the Potteries were infamous for their stink, perhaps notably the Lower John Street and Lockett’s Lane area of Longton.
The main thoroughfares of the towns had a distinctive smell too, redolent of goods sold in butcher’s outlets or game shops, combined with the exhalation of flint-dust, steam and smoke from potters’ establishments, pollutive factory chimneys and the droppings of cart horses in the street.
The horses weren’t entirely responsible for smells in the streets, mind, as from the 1880s, the smoke and sulphurous fumes of the steam trams were an offence to many noses.
Industrial malodour and pollution were to stick to Stoke-on-trent like a limpet – as remembered by author Philip Oakes, who described Longport during his 1930s childhood.
“Potbanks were all around,” wrote Philip. “On foggy days breathing was like trying to inhale over a jug of Friar’s Balsam, but in my aunt’s house the grime was not allowed to settle.”
Smells lingered in the Potteries for decades – as I learned from one former Longton potter, Peter Kelly, who told me back in 2009: “Longton in the early 1960s had the smell of a pottery town – something like the smell of hot chalk, acrid but not nauseous.”
Not that all Longton’s odours were unpleasant – and Peter might have mentioned that of the Walker’s Nonsuch toffee factory in the same town. Similarly, those people living near to breweries such as Parker’s in Burslem would perhaps have enjoyed a rather appetising smell. The waft of coffee from Blockley’s shop in Newcastle is also fondly remembered.
It is fascinating how the smells of our childhood remain with us. For decades, I have walked to Newcastle via the Brampton and caught a whiff of the wonderful flowering redcurrant bushes hanging over a perimeter wall.
For me, it is an uplifting, almost therapeutic fragrance that straightens my back and quickens my step – although a friend of mine reckons the plant smells like cats.
Another aromatic plant I recall from my youth was the lilac tree that my grandmother had in her back garden. She also grew pink and white carnations, which I recall had a mildly sweet and almost creamy scent.
Perhaps I have a keen sense of smell, as I also recall the particular perfume of grandma’s shed.
It reeked of age, as well as rusty garden implements, coal and dried-up Ronseal.
Even some houses smelled of such as mould and damp.
Anyone of a certain vintage will remember the smells of school, which included wax crayons, Quink ink, and brand new exercise books – which in my case, were very rapidly filled with daft cartoons.
The smell of food for school dinners at Wolstanton Grammar School has also stayed with me.
The vegetables, during preparation, always smelled to yours truly as if they were being cooked to death, hence I always ran home for my lunch.
I never liked the smell of the metalwork room at Wolstanton Grammar, as I always associated it with threats to my health, such as sharp instruments like scribers, flamethrowers and showers of sparks.
I also recall the smell of people. Grandma used to take peppermint water for digestive complaints and use other chemists’ medicaments such as Vick’s Sinex and Andrews liver salts, which really got up my nose – literally.
As a youngster, I would stay at my grandmother’s at weekends but would sometimes take a comic or two with me to keep me good.
One weekend, I took an old hardback Dandy annual, whose smell somehow reminded me of when I had originally received it.
“It still smells Christmassy,” I enthused, looking up at dad. “It’s the wrapping,” came his rather prosaic reply.
Dad, as a working man, would always return from Wolstanton WMC after a Sunday lunchtime swill smelling of Double Diamond and fags.
It wasn’t what you would call pleasant, but as a young boy, I saw it as the reassuring smell of my father – strong, pungent, earthy and with a whiff of Brylcreem.
In different circumstances, I found the smell of cigarette fumes annoying, especially as the fug of tobacco made my eyes sting as a kiddie.
And many non-smoking readers will recall nights in the pub and the way your hair and clothes would stink the next day.
And yet, perversely, I have fond recollections of smoky pubs when I consider their heyday.
Probably up until the 1990s, I used to set myself an odd little challenge.
I would stand outside the Bull’s
Vaults in Hassell Street, Newcastle, and walking towards the Stones, would see how long it took me to escape the waft of cigarette fumes being ejected by the pub’s extractor fans.
On some occasions, I could stand outside Woolworths and detect the smell, though I may have had the benefit of wind assistance.
A girlfriend of mine used to live in Tunstall and I would always walk to her house via Tunstall High Street.
I would often pass the Globe pub unconsciously, lost in reverie, only to be emphatically reminded of its existence.
Its front door would always be open on to the street, and although there was an inner door, this failed to prevent the breath of the pub – a heady mix of Bass beer and fags – from ambushing passers-by.
Now, as one who has visited the lavender fields of Yorkshire and rambled through woods of Scottish pine trees, I may be considered to have a nose for a beautiful aroma.
But the exhalation of the Globe was just as sweet, evoking memories of bar-room banter and happy times.
A pal of mine told me that if the smell could be bottled and sold as aftershave, he would definitely splash it on.
The 2004 indoor smoking ban in Ireland was introduced ahead of that in the UK, and I recall complaints being made at the time that the disappearance of tobacco smells had made pub customers more aware of their fellow patrons’ poor personal hygiene. I remember that before the Burton Stores pub closed in Hanley, the fetor around the bar counter was occasionally stomach-churning.
The rumour had it that the landlord kept a pig out the back for use as an air-freshener.
And what about the smell of food? I still jog regularly, and you would think that whilst I am out pounding the pavements, I would be too focused on my exercise to think of eating.
But believe me, if I’m running past the Milehouse Fish Bar, near Newcastle, during opening hours, it offers one of the most seductive smells of all.
Finally, I wish those hardy protestors from Silverdale every good luck with their campaign to stop the stink, and hope that they enjoy the sweet smell of success.