DERELICT SUNDAY

We had a good service at Church and it was good to catch up with various friends afterwards.  Mr. HCB would have been happy to go out for a drive, but (a) the weather wasn’t brilliant and (b) his football team was on television this afternoon, so I made an “executive” decision that we wouldn’t go out.  

I haven’t taken part in the Derelict Sunday challenge for quite sometime, so having spotted this derelict property, which I had taken sometime ago and as things seemed to be happening, with scaffolding up all around, we went back there on our way home.  I remembered to take my selfie stick to “poke through” the metal fence surrounding this particular building, so here it is.  

This is between old and new Swindon and has looked a mess for as long as I can remember.  On chatting about it when we got home, Mr. HCB said that in the early 1950s he used to visit what was a huge storage building next door, known locally as “The Knacker’s Yard”, where carcasses of animals were stored, to get his maggots before be went fishing.  He said he thought that the building I have photographed was possibly a garage for lorries and maybe they were used to transport the carcasses.  Apparently, he used to go in there, speak to whoever was on duty and was then allowed to go and scoop his tin inside the carcass, filling it with squirming maggots, all ripe and ready to be put on his fishing hook in the hope of catching some fish.

When we were first married, I remember walking past this building on my way up Drove Road hill to work, and there was always an awful stench from The Knacker’s Yard, especially if the wind was blowing in a certain direction.  I also remember our boys remarking when we walked past how much it smelled and that smell “hung” in this particular area. In fact, living not that far away, we would often smell this.

Interestingly, I found out the following about a knacker’s yard, which fits in with what Mr. HCB remembers, and what we could smell,  bearing in mind that there were a lot of farms on the outskirts of Swindon, many of which have been sold off for new housing to be built, but which would have needed to use this facility:

"A knacker or knacker man, is a job title used for the centuries-old trade of persons responsible in a certain district for the removal and clearing of animal carcasses (dead, dying, injured) from private farms or public highways and rendering the collected carcasses into by-products such as fats, tallow (yellow grease), glue, gelatin, bone meal, bone char, sal ammoniac, soap, bleach and animal feed. A knacker's yard or a knackery is different from a slaughterhouse or abattoir, where animals are slaughtered for human consumption."

I wonder how many people knew that about knacker men - but as people often say, “every day’s a school day on Blip”!  

A new house was built  next door some years ago on what would have been the Knacker’s Yard, and you can see the new wall in the foreground.  Having worked for a Chartered Surveyor in my working life, I do wonder how much the soil and area around were contaminated.  However, I’m sure that the demolition of this building, if it happens, will be welcomed by the owners of the house.  Fancy living next door to this when you have a decent, new house.

Hope you all have a good week.  M xx