THE FLATLEY DRYER

[Stanley]

Yes, I had left the town in 1953, 14 years before that occurred. I left school that year and went to work for my old gaffer, Lionel Gleed at Harrods Farm, Whatcote. One of the best years of my life. He was a good teacher and I learned a hell of a lot from him and his wife! (And played with big 'Boy's Toys!')

[Stanley]

Looking back, apart from introducing me to hard physical work, remember I was straight out of school, Lionel also gave me responsibilities on the farm. One of the most valuable things he said to me was to always think about what I was doing and what came next. If, by a bit of thought I could reduce the amount of walking about I did it would make me a far more efficient worker. I often think of him if I have to get down on the floor to do something, I always consider whether there is something else I can do while I am down there! I think the lessons stuck in my brain and over the years have made a lot of difference.

[Julie in Norfolk]

That's just reminded me, can you remember the SOS messages that used to be delivered on air by the BBC if someone was dying and close relatives couldn't be located and informed?

Steve and I thought these messages were code for spies abroad, telling them they had been "rumbled" and needed to get away from their current venue. It may have been fanciful, but it may be true. I can't remember what put us on to it.

[PanBiker]

Pre arranged quotes from obscure poetry were sent to "our friends abroad" to notify or trigger events during WWII.

[Stanley]

I can remember cryptic messages sometimes being broadcast and I think they were immediately before or after the nine o'clock news in the evening. In the early days of the war when we were almost certainly going to have a raid and a night in the shelter I used to stay up and listen to the news, later as the air raids ceased I was always in bed by 19:30 and can remember lying there in broad daylight during summer when we had Double Summertime. I understood most of the reports but was puzzled for a long time by the fact that they seemed to bomb a town called Marshalling Yards almost every night.... We were always given the impression on the news that we were hitting back at Germany even though as we now know, a lot of this was propaganda to raise morale.

[Stanley]

Another thing I remember from that era is the short films made by the Ministry of Information that were shown in the cinemas. I must search on Youtube for them. Many of them have become classics. I remember in particular one stock character who was the man who was always bemused until the film enlightened him.

[Stanley]

This colder weather reminds me of the frost on the inside of the window panes in my bedroom and the cold oilcloth on the floor when I got out of bed! I had my father's Home Guard overcoat for an extra blanket when he wasn't wearing it. I can remember what a revelation it was in later years when duvets came in and we got rid of all that weight on us at night with multiple heavy woollen blankets.

[Stanley]

I often wonder whether the duvet raised the birth rate.......

[Stanley]

Beds are one of the areas where I have seen a complete revolution. The reason why Tom Clark did so well when he invested his RAF Gratuity after WW2 in making wire frames for mattresses in his back yard in Skipton was that almost every bed in the land was still the old iron frame with a steel lattice sprung by springs round the periphery. Mattresses were generally a fibre and horsehair packed pad and if you were lucky an under-blanket. You slept between two sheets and the warmth came from multiple heavy woollen blankets and if you were posh a padded over quilt. The blankets were washed once a year and the sheets weekly if you had a good housewife. Old linen sheets were incredibly cold when you got in in winter and the first 'improvement' was to have cotton sheets that had the nap raised, 'Winceyette' which were a lot better. Then there were the dreaded bry-nylon sheets which were awful! I can still remember the weight of the bedclothes on top of you..... No wonder Silentnight took off!

[Tizer]

The councils in our area are building new housing estates on flood plains regardless of warnings from the Environment Agency.

Fri Jun 03, 2016 9:26 am

Sacrificial flooding of the countryside to protect the new housing estates built on the original flood plains which have now become part of the local town suburbs.

Sun Feb 07, 2016 4:58 pm

Last winter when we had the bad floods here in Somerset I mentioned how houses and businesses in the countryside were sacrificed to the floods in order to protect Taunton and Bridgwater where many new housing estates have been built on the flood plain.

Sun Nov 30, 2014 11:46 am

The front page headline of today's `i ' newspaper:
`Revealed: new homes built on flood plains'
"Figures obtained by i show that 1200 houses are in danger areas, with more approved. Official warnings from Environment Agency ignored by planning chiefs."

How come I knew all this was going on years ago and the newspapers didn't?

[Stanley]

I've been trying to find that wonderful pic you put up of the sign advertising a housing development in a flooded field but have drawn a blank!
It's a mystery isn't it. I often marvel at the insights I get sat here at the kitchen table which later turn out to be dead accurate, it's the occupational hazard of thinking and commenting about these things I suppose, we are often right but have no power. Some things, and your example is a good one, are so obviously right but other forces like the profit motive intervene and we get houses built in places our ancestors would never have considered when they were building for themselves. Look at the number of time during floods when the local church was a place of refuge.....

[Tizer]

One of our local towns knocked down the swimming baths in the town centre and sold off the site for a supermarket. They'd promised to build new public baths before shutting the old one - but they didn't. The supermarket hasn't been built either. Now they have built a new swimming baths but they're way out on one side of town and inconvenient for all those who have to drive to it through traffic jams in the centre.

Another local town has also lost its swimming baths which were to be replaced with a new super-duper facility. The new one has opened - but the deepest part is only 1.2 metres deep (about 4 feet)! It must be an austerity swimming baths. My relatives who live there are keen swimmers and they point out that it's longer possible to teach the full range of swimming techniques and safety moves (and probably a bit dodgy for keen divers!)

[Stanley]

The old Victorian swimming baths were temples of hygiene as well in the days before bathrooms at home. Public wash houses were often part of the baths. All part of the late 19th century realisation that living conditions in towns were damaging Physical Efficiency. We got public parks at the same time.

[Tizer]

I remember swimming baths at Belper Street, Freckleton Street and Blakey Moor in Blackburn. Thinking back, what strikes me now is that anyone who sold wall tiles in those days must have made a fortune!

[Stanley]

They did! Two LKF about glazed bricks..... They were all based on firebrick or refractory brick so as to stand the higher temperatures of firing to melt the glaze. The dark brown ceramics of the late 19th and early 20th centuries gained their deep brown colour from the use of Oxides of Uranium and are radio-active. This includes the ubiquitous brown teapot! I learned this from the Fire Officer at Rochdale who told me not to cut the glazed bricks in the engine house with an abrasive Skil Saw but to send for them and they would do it for us under controlled conditions as the dust would be dangerous.

[Tizer]

Uranium oxide was used in the red glazes of American ceramic ware. For example the the Fiesta red ware launched by the Homer Laughlin Company in 1936. The company says: "Prior to World War II, it was common practice for manufacturers of ceramic dinnerware to use uranium oxide in color glazes. The Homer Laughlin China Company was no exception, using this material in the original “Fiesta Red” glaze, among others. In 1943, the U.S. Government stopped all civilian use of uranium oxide because available supplies were needed for the war effort. Homer Laughlin stopped producing the red glaze color at that time and for that reason. Nonetheless, this interruption in production is believed to be the source of the rumor that Fiesta’s red glaze was removed from the market because it was radioactive. In truth, the red glaze emitted far less radiation than some other consumer products. Following the lifting of wartime restrictions, Homer Laughlin again began producing the red glaze in the 1950s, using a depleted grade of uranium oxide. Homer Laughlin stopped all use of depleted uranium oxide in 1972 and it is not used in Fiesta Dinnerware which is produced today." (Quoted from Wikipedia)

[Stanley]

The Fire Officer explained it to me by saying that in theory, if you stood six inches away from the brown glazed bricks and stared at them continuously for six months it would seriously elevate the chances of cataracts and so was not a serious health hazard. However, cutting the bricks with an abrasive saw released fine particles that could be breathed in and retained in the lungs.

[Stanley]

Nowadays the prized possessions of our youngsters is probably their phone and other items of electronic equipment. In my youth it was much simpler. Here's a list of what I considered my best possessions. An Ostrich Egg, a 25lb practice bomb. a de-activated Mills Bomb, a naval pattern jack-knife, a pocket compass and of course a collection of marbles.... I doubt if any of these would excite today's youth!

[Stanley]

And then of course there was my collection of shrapnel..... Can you imagine kids walking to school with shrapnel raining down on them today? There were some serious sized lumps but even the smaller pieces were dangerous. I once found something bigger and took it to school. As soon as the teachers saw it they confiscated it and put it in the outside staff toilets (God knows why!) and sent for the Bomb Disposal. Turned out it was a full clip of 20mm cannon ammunition with explosive heads...... I was told not to pick anything like that up again...... Beats Playstation!

[PanBiker]

My brother lost our hand grenade by way of school confiscation as well. It was fully defused but complete with lever, pin and inert screw in detonator in the base. We used to to chuck it about, pull it apart and reassemble without problem. Our lad was demonstrating this to one of his mates when the teacher walked in and nearly had a heart attack.

When I was clearing my mum and dads house after they had died I came across a 20mm Hispano Anti-Tank round in the out house. It was a live round and I had no idea why my dad would have it. No good to me so I took it into the police station and filled in a few forms. The house was empty by then but it didn't stop them coming to see if there were any more. I wonder how much ordnance and liberated weaponry is actually in drawers and sheds?

[Stanley]

More than anyone imagines Ian! Then there are the UXBs which are still found occasionally while digging foundations, dredging or fishing. Don't forget that one of the enormous mines installed and exploded under the German lines in the Battle of the Somme failed to detonate. There is still perhaps as much as 40 tons of Ammonal underground there. Then there is the Liberty Ship in the Tames Estuary near Canvey Island......

[Gadge]

Don't forget that one of the enormous mines installed and exploded under the German lines in the Battle of the Somme failed to detonate. There is still perhaps as much as 40 tons of Ammonal underground there. Then there is the Liberty Ship in the Tames Estuary near Canvey Island......

G'day Stanley,
There are a few more than that - a total of five, total charge 166,000 lb of ammonal! There were originally six, until one detonated during a thunderstorm in 1955...
These five didn't fail to detonate; they were not used due either to loss of access, or changes in the tactical situation between laying/charging and the big bang of 17th July 1917.
So they are still there, fully charged and primed.

An informative discussion on these: http://1914-1918.invisionzone.com/forum ... ded-mines/&

And a short report: http://www.durandgroup.org.uk/durand_gr ... mines.html
The Durand Group has disarmed several mines beneath the Vimy Ridge Memorial site, and they found that the major proportion of the ammonal charges was still 'ready to go up'.

[Stanley]

Thanks for that Gadge, I didn't know there were so many......

[Gadge]

Thanks for that Gadge, I didn't know there were so many......

De nada, Stanley. Few folk do know! I must admit I was gobsmacked when I first found that info.

Then that sent me hunting for more technical info, and I found a very interesting paper presented to the Aust Institute of Mining & Metallurgy after the War, by one Captain Oliver Woodward, one of the Aussie tunnelling/mining contingent. He had charge of the mine/s below Hill 60. As is mentioned in the 1914-18 Forum discussion, they went to a lot of trouble to ensure that these mines would fire reliably when it was wanted - I held a blasting ticket for 25 years up until last year, so the technical aspects were quite fascinating to me.

[Big Kev]

Then there is the Liberty Ship in the Tames Estuary near Canvey Island......

The Richard Montgomery? Used to be all sorts of stories around it when I was growing up, we could see it off of Sheerness when we went there at weekends in the summer. It's only recently I watched a documentary and realised all the stories were basically true. It really would take out a very wide area if it ever 'went off'.