June 2015 Parish Magazine
Church of St. Mary the Virgin, Finedon, monthly magazine
Church of St. Mary the Virgin, Finedon, monthly magazine
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In My Day<br />
The ramblings of Hubert James<br />
In my day it was abut this time of year<br />
that we cleared the air. No not that<br />
sort of air clearing, I mean the real air.<br />
You see in my day our houses all had<br />
open fires. And open fires produce<br />
smoke. All winter long a cloud of<br />
smoke would hang over us, even<br />
deep in the Shires. I’m guessing<br />
some of you younger folk think<br />
chimneys are just for decoration or<br />
Santa Claus. In fact they were a<br />
clever way of stopping folk choking to<br />
death by taking the smoke up and<br />
away. Mind you, I heard that they<br />
have now been put on the<br />
endangered species list.<br />
Course Chimney Sweeps have been<br />
on the list a lot longer. You see<br />
without a Sweep to clear the soot left<br />
behind by the smoke, you was<br />
guaranteed to have a fire not only in<br />
the grate but also in the chimney. And<br />
once the chimney caught fire your<br />
chimney breast would crack open with<br />
the heat. Your Sweep was vital.<br />
In my day we had 3 sweeps working<br />
around Finedon. As you’ll know<br />
traditionally the Sweep would use a<br />
small child to shin up the chimney and<br />
scrub out the soot. It was left to an<br />
enterprising sweep by the name of<br />
Richard Fantyke to invent the circular<br />
brush on a pole. Dick’s wife was fed<br />
up with having to wash her children’s<br />
clothes and nagged him to come up<br />
with an alternative. His prototype<br />
used straw attached to some runner<br />
bean sticks.<br />
It worked and the local kids breathed<br />
a sigh of relief which they rather<br />
enjoyed because they had trouble<br />
breathing anything and sighing had<br />
been beyond them.<br />
Gradually, though we needed less<br />
Sweeps. Folk chose other ways of<br />
heating their homes. Redundant<br />
Sweeps turned to turning up at<br />
weddings as good luck charms. See,<br />
Sweeps was considered lucky. Shake<br />
hands with a Sweep and celebrate<br />
how lucky you was not to be one.<br />
Mass sweeping came to a sad end in<br />
the 1960’s when a Sweep called<br />
Harry Corbett was due to do the<br />
whole of Summerlee Road while folk<br />
were away for factory fortnight. The<br />
fool went and invited all his mates<br />
around for a huge Sweep party. They<br />
was dancing on the roofs and<br />
stepping in time to the music. They<br />
left a helluva mess, and Harry was<br />
plastered from head to toe in black<br />
dust. When the residents returned to<br />
their filthy homes they took legal<br />
action and Harry was ruined. He gave<br />
up sweeping and took to the stage.<br />
The ET ran the story under the<br />
headline; Sooty Sweep Sued.