Friday Folk

OUR nature writer Ron Freethy is flushed with success after readers came to the rescue with their loo stories.

Ron recently asked readers for their memories of the days when toilet facilities were, to say the least, primitive.

And the letters flooded in.

Mrs Ainsworth took us back to the days of her mother-in-law, who as a young girl worked as a weaver at Florence Mill, near Shaw Bridge, in Whalley New Road, Blackburn.

"For the weavers there were three toilets placed together but without any doors for privacy," wrote Mrs Ainsworth.

"This meant all the ladies visited when necessary for only a short time. It was only when a lady factory inspector came to investigate conditions that the manager was instructed to have doors fitted before her next visit."

One woman from Langho wrote of a keeper's cottage which had an outside bucket used for a privy.

"It was emptied weekly by the rural district council, who had a tanker. When this was full the contents were spread on a field behind the Black Bull alongside the footpath to Dinckley Brook and Aspinall's Farm." Mrs Adamson, from Wilpshire, remembers as a child, back in the 1940s, using her grandparents' loo at Nappa.

"The toilet was across the garden 15 yards away and up a couple of steps," she said.

"It was a stone building - even the roof - with ivy growing all over it. The privy was a wooden bench with a hole in it, beneath which was a tin bucket. They kept geese as guards and we had to dodge these during our visits, which were kept as few as possible."

She recalls sitting by the lovely warm fire, nice and cosy, and having the urge to pay a visit.

"Coat on. Umbrella ready if it was raining, getting someone to go out with you to dodge the geese.

"Going to the loo in those days was a scary experience."

Ron is still looking for memories.

He wants to know of anyone who may have decorated chamber pots and memories of privies in industrial buildings, pubs, or schools.

"Although privies sound rather too personal to be discussed, they are a very important part of our social history and I want to help record this part of Lancashire's past," said Ron.

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