Open Writing

As the sights and sounds of past years remain in our memories, then the smells associated with those times might also linger with us.

Each succeeding generation introduces its own innovations with the result that the old ways and means are discarded, and so it is with their relevant aromas.

The daily smell of horses is no longer with us. Gone are the days when a haulier’s dray stood outside a local pub with the horse harnessed between the shafts contentedly enjoying its midday meal from within a nosebag swinging beneath its chin. We, as youngsters, watched in fascination as the contents of the bag diminished and the horse, through accustomed habit, bent its head to rest the bag on the ground, thus enabling the last vestiges of its contents to be reached. All the time, especially in cold weather, there radiated the smell of horse, and its steamy breath mixed with those of warmed hessian nosebag and its cereal contents.

The pubs of those days gave off their own distinct smell as one passed their open doors, particularly so in the early part of a day. There was the unmistakable aroma of beer, but one that had about it a certain staleness, along with the whiff of ageing tobacco smoke. The whole not entirely unpleasant, but yet not one to be savoured.

Again outside a pub we as young boys would watch the delivery of fresh beer supplies, wooden barrels held in a rope sling which was used to control the casks’ descent into the beer cellar. Meanwhile there arose from out of the vault the reek of dank air mixed with more beer aroma.

Dry summer weather brought a much more foul stench which escaped from sewer grates along the roadsides, when people would hope for rain to swill the channels through before an outbreak of disease struck the community.

Motorised drain cleaners were employed to suck out unwanted debris and to inject a flush of clean water to clear the drain of foul static liquids, much as occurs today. Despite risk to health, we young ones would stand as near the open sewer as the operator would allow and listen in fascination to the swooshes and gurglings that came from underground, despite the fact that foul air was rising from the open drain and that we were well aware of possible contamination. Youthful curiosity can be a very powerful force.

Workhorses were in evidence up to and throughout the Second World War. In addition to hauling the four-wheeled drays mentioned earlier, they trundled around high-sided two-wheeled carts, and it was one such that was used for the cleaning out of domestic ash-pits.

Ash-pits had their own smell, one difficult to describe, that is unless it was attached to an earth closet. There was no mistaking that bouquet!

Fire-ash and other household debris, however, emitted a musty smell, neither
pleasant nor unpleasant. It should be borne in mind that almost all rubbish deposited in the pit had passed through the household fire, this chiefly for economic reasons. Thus the accumulated mass was to some extent purified.

When watching the cleaning out of such ash depositories -- which we young ones did as opportunity arose -- we would see the blackened cans from salmon, tinned fruit and condensed milk, flattened spiral springs from worn-out corsets, worn clog irons, cockle and mussel shells and the bleached bones of flesh and fowl.

Is it any wonder then that the smell resulting from such a conglomeration should be difficult to describe?

The burning of much household waste was carried out at night when it was hoped that darkness would shield the perpetrators by masking the telltale smoke. Meanwhile, surrounding areas were impregnated with odours unidentifiable, and recipients of the fumes were left wondering who was burning what -- or perhaps who!

Fish and chip shops had their own unforgettable aromas. These have been sufficiently documented without further singing their praises here.

One other shop which possessed its own characteristic odour was the chemist’s, that aromatic compound which was sufficiently evident to create the riddle, ‘What smells most in a chemist’s shop?’ No prizes for knowing the answer.

Amongst other shops which carried their distinctive aromas was the butcher’s Here many of the shop floors were sprinkled with sawdust. Its presence seemed to act as an air purifier, resulting in a clean atmosphere.

There was no mistaking the cobbler’s shop with its tang of leather interspersed with, at the time, the somewhat newly arrived smell of vulcanised rubber heels and soles.

In a village surrounded by textile mills the smell of mill grease was constantly present. Women employees predominantly wore black overalls, which betrayed their occupation not only by their uniformity but also by the aromas which emanated from them, those of the oils used in the manufacture of blankets, horse rugs and other heavy woollens. The men who spun such yarns also carried about their work clothes the same telltale bouquet.

There were far more obnoxious smells than mill grease. With the wind in a certain quarter the air would become filled with the stench from the local sewage bed, whilst, blown from another direction, would come the equally distasteful odour of a burning slag heap from the pit, one of rotten eggs. At such times housewives would hurry to close doors and windows in an attempt to prevent such unsavoury fumes from filling the family home.

In other areas of the district one could be met by the nauseating stench from the skin works or tripe boilers.

Each season of the year brought with it associated smells. As young boys, on November 6th we would gather burned-out firework cases with their scent of charred cardboard containers and spent gunpowder. Spring and summer carried the aromas of newly-mown grass in the local park, along with the fragrance of flowers as they came into bloom. Newly-mown hay was always sniffed with appreciation, as were the distinctive fumes from the roadside tar boiler. Whilst Christmas to some wasn’t Christmas without the fragrance of cigar smoke.

Times were changing though and, as stated at the outset of this theme, many of the aromas from old faded away to be replaced with what is possibly the most proliferating smell around today, that of exhaust fumes from the internal -- some would say infernal -- combustion engine.

There was a time when such fumes were novel and sniffed in curiosity and fascination, when they formed clouds in a shade of sky blue, whilst interiors of the vehicles which emitted them were filled with the reek of petrol. Diesel fumes were almost unknown on the streets of those days, but as we know all too well, they were waiting in a very near future, ready to envelop society and to cloud out the scents of old.