View Single Post
  #56  
Old 11-01-2015, 09:06 PM
Digvul Digvul is offline
Member
 
Join Date: Apr 2012
Location: Wigan
Posts: 50
Default

For the last several years I have been attempting to write an account of my childhood in Radcliffe during the 1950s. At a fairly early stage of this project I wrote a brief history of the village and was intrigued by the early sanitary arrangements – there weren't any! As for the water supply, McAndrews in his book “Amble and District” (written circa 1916) states on page 61, “...the inhabitants of Radcliffe Colliery were supplied from the harbour pump in the summer months, the water being carted to the colliery village and retailed at ½d per can.” I wondered where the villagers obtained their water for the rest of the year. There are some possible explanations in various postings on the forum; in addition Edward Wallenburg, in his booklet “Old Radcliffe”, says “...water had to be carried in pails or barrels from Togston by way of the Hope Road.” I assume, however, that the villagers must, at some time, have taken water from the burn which flows to the south of the village. I've always had a problem with this theory as there were two unnatural hillocks in the village by the side of the burn, one near the top of Leslie Row and the other near the bottom of Cross Row. (These can be seen on the 1923 map which is somewhere on this forum.) The hillocks were said to be old dumps where the village's debris and faeces were deposited. If this is so “matter” from the dumps must have leaked into the burn – no wonder there was a cholera outbreak in 1864! Were the villages simply ignorant of the causes of the disease or was there simply nowhere else to dump their waste?

The netties and middens were very much a feature of the village during my time and I'm sure there are members of the forum who remember Tommy Cleghorn, the “midden man”. He came with his horse and cart on a Thursday morning and climbed into the middens to clear out the faeces, cans, ash from the fires etc. and transport them to the tip which was situated some distance beyond the west end of the welfare. There will be many who also remember the only water supply was from taps in the street (three for the thirty-two houses in Leslie Row where I lived). Happy days!
Reply With Quote