Victorian Rubbish
I found it interesting to discover that this is not the first time tipping of the town’s waste on the northern side of Hollingdean Road has created both a health hazard and a campaign by local people to do something about it. It appears that in 1810 events started to unfold that parallel in many ways our own struggle to Dump the Dump. In that year, under the terms of the Brighton Town Act, the town commissioners first appointed ‘scavengers’ to collect the town’s domestic rubbish and night soil This refuse was taken to Dog Kennel Road (so called because the kennels of the Brighton Harriers were located there), now Upper Hollingdean Road, the site of the parish dust-yard. Here it was sorted, with any useful material sold off and the remaining waste tipped, creating what contemporaries claimed was an atmosphere detrimental to their health. This must have been bad enough for local residents, but in May 1886 the Corporation opened a ‘dust-destructor’ on the Hollingdean site to incinerate the refuse. The dust-yard had a wharf with a yard for the deposit and sorting of the rubbish. Later a railway ran by the side of the wharf to facilitate easy transportation of the remainder of the waste and clinker. In time the site came to have ‘a twelve-cell destructor with four cremators and two dust screens’, along with an enormous chimney.
The Round Hill Local History Group in their publication ‘Rose Hill to Roundhill: a Brighton Community’ (2004) demonstrate the considerable resistance there was to the building of the incinerator by local people and the apparent complacency of the Council to concerns over health and commercial considerations. In 1898, Mr J L Thompson wrote to the Council alleging a smell from the refuse destructor and asked if they intended to do anything about it. A similar complaint came from Reverent W W Palmer who also focused on unpleasant smells emanating from the chimney. In response, the Council appointed a surveyor to investigate the complaints and he visited destructors around the country, in order to compare facilities. His conclusions have an oddly familiar ring to them:-
‘I have repeatedly stood in the very midst of the refuse while all the operations of tipping it from the carts onto the yard and of sorting and sifting the materials have been carried on. I have not experienced anything but a faint odour that has been imperceptible when I have walked away a few paces off. When I left the yard and walked in the roads and streets close by I have never been able to detect the slightest nuisance, nor have I observed any flies that are always a sure indication of the presence of offending matters’.
However, Council minutes from July 1900 show that this matter did not go away. Messrs Davey Bros complained of the smell and in this instance the Council denied that the smell came from the destructor but blamed ‘a heap of clinkers that had become fired and fused’. Resistance to the development of the dust destructor also came from local businesses; laundries in the Roundhill and Holllingdean area were particularly vexed about ‘dirty debris’ or smuts, which they referred to as ‘blacks’, entering their laundries.
In spite of all the complaints made and criticism of the Council’s plans they continued to incinerate waste on this site until 1952. After that, the household refuse was tipped at Sheepcote Valley and the Hollingdean destructor became redundant. The chimney, which had dominated the skyline for so long, was knocked down in 1962, to be replaced in about 1966 by Nettleton Court and Dudeney Lodge. The Council’s Technical Services Department took over what remained of the site as a depot for their works vehicles.
This brings the Hollingdean site pretty much up to the present situation. I just hope that the next chapter in the story of the old parish dust-yard has a happier ending for all concerned.
Note: For those interested in the history of the Roundhill area I recommend the Round Hill Local History Group publication, ‘Rose Hill to Roundhill: a Brighton Community’, Brighton Books Publishing, 2004