After the sewers were built came Davyhulme sewage works. The sludge from the sewage works were taken down the ship canal by boat (later a pipeline to Liverpool) and dumped in Liverpool Bay, started in 1898 and finished in 1998. Used to regularly see the 'sludge boats'.Later it was taken in ships down the Manchester Ship Canal and maybe dumped at sea?
When I were a lad (1960), the only plastic in our house was my plastic drinking cup, bakelite electrical fittings (switches, sockets, light fittings) and a bakelite radio. (In case you are wondering: the electrical wiring was coated in rubber in those days.)Did they have much rubbish to convey (well at least before the 1950s and early 60s)? It's an interesting thought. Before the consumer society got fully going there was a lot less rubbish to deal with, and more of it was organic - food waste trimmings type stuff. Far less wrapping paper or containers etc., esp before the rise of plastics. People burned stuff at home on the fireplace often so the rubbish became ash , or buried other stuff in the garden, food bottles / jars etc would often be returnable, for money - those Victorian medicine bottles you dig up for example - tho obv not in dense city housing with no gardens.
I got a sense of what this might have been like when as a student I went to Poland in 1991. Stuff you got in shops was just handed to you unwrapped on many cases, there was no litter on the streets on the whole as there was nothing to drop as litter (there was lots of dust and grit against the kerbs but not western European style litter of wrapping, cans etc etc), I got beer from the local shop for I think about 20p a bottle, but c10p was refundable with the bottle I think ! I assume the costs of bottle production was greater than the cost of beer production so the bottle was of high proportionate value to the brewer.
Having said all this, there must have been some rubbish to convey, but towns were smaller so tips may have been not very far away etc?
A thought provoking post!
It seems that LT used to run rubbish trains (sorry, refuse trains) to the Croxley tip - see the following clip:
After the sewers were built came Davyhulme sewage works. The sludge from the sewage works were taken down the ship canal by boat (later a pipeline to Liverpool) and dumped in Liverpool Bay, started in 1898 and finished in 1998. Used to regularly see the 'sludge boats'.
When I were a lad (1960), the only plastic in our house was my plastic drinking cup, bakelite electrical fittings (switches, sockets, light fittings) and a bakelite radio. (In case you are wondering: the electrical wiring was coated in rubber in those days.)
The only things in our bin were tins, glass jars, some food waste (bones and carcasses), and ash and cinders from the coal fire. Other items were dirty rags and footwear when they were beyond repair, broken crockery would have gone in the bin too. Vegetable waste was composted, the rest was burnt on the coal fire, as well as packaging: which was paper, a bit of cardboard and cellophane (not usually considered to be a plastic). Newspapers were recycled by taking them to the local chip shop for use to wrap chips. Milk bottles (glass) were taken away by the milk man and replaced by full ones, glass bottles were returned to the grocers, or off-licence to retrieve your 'deposit' (usually 3d in those days), which had been paid when you purchased the full bottle. Old clothes would have been recycled by the rag and bone man, scrap metal collected by the rag and bone man or the local scrapman. That would have been all our waste dealt with.
I *think* that might have been one of the last holdouts of LT steam ( into the early 70s ).
A great summary! And people like to claim that 'it's young people who are keen on the environment', which in my experience is very hit and miss - no more or less interested than other age groups, and often rather less interested when it comes to ordering takeaway food...After the sewers were built came Davyhulme sewage works. The sludge from the sewage works were taken down the ship canal by boat (later a pipeline to Liverpool) and dumped in Liverpool Bay, started in 1898 and finished in 1998. Used to regularly see the 'sludge boats'.
When I were a lad (1960), the only plastic in our house was my plastic drinking cup, bakelite electrical fittings (switches, sockets, light fittings) and a bakelite radio. (In case you are wondering: the electrical wiring was coated in rubber in those days.)
The only things in our bin were tins, glass jars, some food waste (bones and carcasses), and ash and cinders from the coal fire. Other items were dirty rags and footwear when they were beyond repair, broken crockery would have gone in the bin too. Vegetable waste was composted, the rest was burnt on the coal fire, as well as packaging: which was paper, a bit of cardboard and cellophane (not usually considered to be a plastic). Newspapers were recycled by taking them to the local chip shop for use to wrap chips. Milk bottles (glass) were taken away by the milk man and replaced by full ones, glass bottles were returned to the grocers, or off-licence to retrieve your 'deposit' (usually 3d in those days), which had been paid when you purchased the full bottle. Old clothes would have been recycled by the rag and bone man, scrap metal collected by the rag and bone man or the local scrapman. That would have been all our waste dealt with.
If you had a garden, the ash from the fire would often end up on it. My parent's home suffered from heavy clay soil, my father would use the ash and clinker to break it upIn our house it was because the hot ashes would have gone straight through the bottom, (we only ever had galvanised bins).
There is an interesting thread about the Croxley tip here:I *think* that might have been one of the last holdouts of LT steam ( into the early 70s ).
La Vuelta and the Giro both have rubbish zones where riders can drop rubbish/bottles etc and it will be cleared up. If they do so anywhere else they'll get penalised for it.Tour de France cyclists do or did discard their drinking bottles with a good conscience, for adoring fans gathered them as souvenirs.
The Glasgow Corporation sludge boats on the Clyde even carried passengers in the summer!The "sludge boats" on the Manchester Ship Canal certainly in their latter days were kept in immaculate external condition and gave no hint as to their cargo. In fact the sludge they carried had been treated at Davyhulme, at which time methane was extracted and used (might still be?) to power dual fuel Mirrlees engines generating enough electricity to power the works. By the time the sludge was aboard ship it would be fairly inert compared with when the product first arrived at the works. Sludge is still carried ,by road tanker, on a daily basis from sites around Manchester to Davyhulme.
On collection by horse-drawn carts, refuse and street sweepings went to the depots at Stanley Street [near Smithfield] or South Gloucester Street [near Tara Street and Westland Row/Pearse stations]. At Stanley Street, it went straight into the destructor, the clinker and ash being then loaded into tipping wagons built specifically for refuse disposal. There was a fleet of about 70 such vehicles, together with three electric locomotives. The refuse from South Gloucester Street...was ferried to Stanley Street for burning.
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Most of the Corporation [i.e. local authority] work was carried out at night after normal tramway traffic had ceased, as was haulage of the incinerated material to Fairview. Here, specially constructed branches led into the sloblands [the present-day Fairview Park, which was reclaimed using the waste material] with spurs, which could be altered to suit requirements.
Agreed and quite hard to track down a copy of same, these days.The book 'Manchester's Narrow Gauge Railways - Chat Moss & Carrington Estates' published 1985 by the Narrow Gauge Railway Society details how the two areas were reclaimed using waste from the city.
A fascinating read about a most unusual subject.
Brentwood sewage works had a monorail, presumably from Road Machines. I remember seeing it when I commuted to Liverpool Street in the 70s and 80s but don't know when it was removed.Minworth sewage works was probably the last of its kind in the country to have an internal rail network 2' gauge, closed about 1990, it was hoped to retain part as a demonstration line, finally dismantled around 1995.
Abergnolwyn also had its own rail system, which explains the layout of the village, wagons were hand propelled to the foot of the village incline, then winched up onto the Talyllyn railway - night soil included.