June 2015 Parish Magazine

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