The Back Lanes of Mumbles
by Carol Powell M.A.
With the increase in the population of the village and the implementation of the Public Health Act 1875, a Local Board was set up to co-ordinate and control various aspects of public health — clean water, drainage and scavenging. John Rosser was appointed as the first Inspector of Nuisances, his job being to serve notices on residents who did not deal with ‘nuisances’ on their properties and two 'Scavengers' were employed to clear rubbish and ‘night soil’ — oddly to us perhaps, they were two butchers, Mr. Morris for the western part and David Eley for the eastern part. Later, in the 1920s, two massive carthorses were stabled in the building to the rear the Co-op and these, in addition to their other tasks, were used to pull the ‘night-cart’, a covered tank on a cart, operated by Tom Williams of Park Street. Once a week he and one of the horses drawing the cart would go to empty the buckets put out by the residents. Later on, the lanes were to be the course for the underground mains sewerage system.
Cottages without Back Lanes
The older houses in Mumbles had not been built with back lanes — e.g. Hall Bank, Clifton Terrace, Dickslade, Western and Village Lanes and Park Street, but by the latter years of the Victorian and the pre Great-war years of the twentieth century, it was considered necessary to have a rear entrance. Thus, Gloucester Place, John and William Streets, Victoria Avenue, Stanley Street and Woodville, Oakland, Queens and Kings Roads were all built with back lanes, although many of these properties were by now being built with flushing loos, albeit outside ones. Many of the stone buildings facing the lanes were originally built as stables for the horses used to pull the tradesmen’s delivery carts.
People threw the ashes from their fires onto the lanes, which with a few stones, helped it to maintain a firm surface, useful for the wheels of the council vehiclesbelonging to the night soil men, coal men and the refuse men, who collected the general household waste.
The local girls played games, such as ‘statues’ and skipping to such rhymes as ‘salt, mustard, vinegar, pepper’ and the boys, ‘mob’ and ‘cat and dog’ in the lanes and on 5th November, they would light their bonfires and set off their fireworks there.
Tradesmen such as the umbrella-repair man, the knife sharpener, the stick and paraffin man, the baker, the milkman and the cockle lady selling her wares and her home-grown vegetables, always used the roads and the front entrances to the houses. They were always just known as the 'Back Lanes' and were not called ‘Drangs’ as were others such as the one from All Saints’ Church leading down to the main road.
Acknowledgments
Barbara Fisher
Hazel Hickson
Thomas Lewis
Grafton Maggs
Jean Tegman
The Minutes of the Oystermouth Local Board
Inklemakers, Life in nineteenth-century Oystermouth by Carol Powell.
George Bank, Southend (Mumbles)