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Linda adds on 23/01/07
Hi Andy, hope you are well,
I have just seen your piece about the tip up Halewick Lane, both
my Dad and brother worked for the council during the seventies
and the tip was in full swing then, dustcarts were going back
and forth to the tip all day long and if you stood in Uncle Jack
and Aunty Nelly’s back door, you could here them all morning,
because they had a small trailer attached to the back for larger
items of rubbish and there must have been a hump in the road
just past Halewick Close, because as they went over it there
used to be an almighty thud and then quiet.
I remember once, that my Dad had to go and fill his tanker{he
emptied cess pits in the surrounding district,ie Partridge Green
and Peas Pottage etc} with water because the tip had caught
fire, internal combustion was the problem and it was blazing
away underneath then finally came to the surface. I don’t
remember how many trips had to be made to finally extinguish the
blaze but it would have been a few.
I can also remember playing amongst all the rubbish, Yuk, how we
didn’t get some deadly type of disease I will never know but we
were healthy and never ailed too much. My brother once fell from
the dustcart he was working on and was run over by the small
trailer at the back, he was riding on the back of the cart,
which they did to enable them to get on and off at different
stops, because it was deemed quicker than getting in and out of
the cab, of course they were not supposed to do it for obvious
reasons but it was the piece of road just past Halewick Close
where it happened, the cart went over the hump he lost his
balance and the consequences were, he was hospitalised for
quite a while and was then in a steel brace for some years
after.
We would go for a walk when young, which started in the field at
the bottom of Steepdown, up on to the old Dancton Lane onwards
past the barn {no longer there} past the water works and on to
the top of Dancton where you could look down onto Lychepole, if
you carried on you could walk right round until you came to the
tip and then it was straight down past Linfields on the left and
finally down Halewick Lane back home.
I hope this is of interest to you, my Dad also had a stint in
the carts that collected items of furniture that people no
longer wanted and he had{ who I thought to be quite old then} a
mate that worked with him, my Dad drove the cart and operated
the back which lifted to compress items, well before you started
the lift, you made sure there wasn’t anyone hanging on to the
back of the cart, he thought he had but the chap working with
him was as my brother was standing on the back, my Dad began to
lift the back up and heard shouting, he stopped the hydraulics
got out and found his mate hanging on for dear life, going up
with the cart, luckily my Dad heard him or he may well have been
disposed of with the rest of the rubbish. As you can see it
wasn’t always the safest of jobs, especially if you worked with
my family! |
