The Ashpit Warriors

Origins

Two Bellingham men who should have had royal honours were Joe and Kit Maughan, who would be described in their day as ‘general carters’ with their two horses and carts, based down the burnside at the start of the road to the Boat farm.

Joe had a light grey horse and it was wise to keep away from its front end where the chompers were. Kit’s horse was brown with better manners. Their carts had benefitted from the war by being fitted with surplus aeroplane axels and wheels with rubber tyres to replace the standard wooden wheels made by Weightmans the Lanehead joiners and undertakers, and fitted with iron rims ‘sweated’ on by Burnie the blacksmith.

One of their major contracts was to empty the ash pits and ‘earth toilets’ (netties) in many village streets, and I had close experience of the five netties (one per two houses) at Noble Street where I was born and grew up till age 12, when we moved to a Council house in Fairshaw Crescent with all mod cons!

The combined nettie and attached ash pit was a stone mason’s work of art combined with Victorian technology. The toilet part with pitched roof and ventilation slit high up in the wall had a lockable door with a box for seating complete with lidded hole. The coping stones on the attached ash pit were rounded which made it easier to throw stuff in, and to get in to retrieve the cricket ball before you were reminded that you were now out, AND you had to go in and collect it too!

Ash from our fires fuelled by Hareshaw coal was supposed to be the main component of the ash pit, but we threw everything we wanted rid of in there, with the exception of garden waste that went to a small tip on the fell near the Woodburn road.

The challenge for Joe and Kit on their regular visits was to get into the ash pit, shod in their clogs and leggings, and clean out the contents before opening the little gate into the nettie part and attacking what human waste we had deposited, accompanied by torn up newspaper and perhaps the People’s Friend magazine. We only kept toilet paper for when my special aunt Mary and family arrived from Lemington, as they had bathrooms and flush toilets and were a bit posh! Mother even got Harry Glass and his taxi to take them from the station up the hill to Noble Street!

We had to become skilled in carrying the full chamber pot down the ladder-like stairs from our single bedroom, and then up the worn stone steps (iced covered in winter) to empty in the nettie. I don’t remember us every washing hands after using the toilet, as there was only the one outside tap in the street for all ten houses to use, and that water came of Geordie Breckons’s fell and was always ice cold.

Where did this choice organic waste go? At the far end of the Breckons’s fell near the Blue Heaps were the ‘frog ponds’ that were a great feature for us kids to collect spawn and watch nature’s magic turn it into tadpoles we kept in jars then into frogs again. The ponds were really peat sink holes and easily swallowed up what we Noble street tenants of the Duke of Northumberland had to offer for our weekly rent, collected by Geordie Breckons who acted as the Duke’s agent.

Joe and Kit Maughan must have been immune to every known bug of the time as they lived long hard working lives. They could dress up too, in dark suit, black polished boots and bowler hat to drive their four-wheeled wagon draped in a black cover carrying a coffin to the cemetery of some Bellingham soul, followed by a parade of slowly walking mourners. Even the horses knew this was an important occasion devoid of flies and ash-pit aroma!