Carol Brown’s history of Bellfields & Slyfield

Recycling has become a hot topic lately, and schools are getting in on the action by appointing students as recycling champions. Another pressing concern is the pollution of our waterways, rivers, and seas with raw sewage. How can we manage all the waste we generate? A few years back, a proposal for a new waste incinerator in Guildford was turned down. The challenge of waste disposal is growing, but it’s not a new issue,

Back as far as the 1880’s local authorities were building ‘Dust’ or Refuse Destructors to incinerate waste.

Previously waste was either just tipped onto a pile on the outskirts of a town, or could be buried. This included human waste as well as clinker (see definition) from coal fires, ashes and waste food. Often this led to outbreaks of diseases such as cholera.

Britain was the pioneer of incinerator development, the first being constructed in 1876. It was felt that it was cheaper to burn the refuse and sell the byproducts, electricity produced by the steam being one of them.

The steam, which reached an incredibly high temperature was also often used for heating public bath houses and were built near them for that purpose. When the clinker (from coal fires) and ashes had been incinerated this byproduct was sold to brickmakers for brick making.

They weren’t just used for burning refuse, furniture, curtains and carpets could be cleaned of dust, but more importantly fumigated to kill fleas, cockroaches and any mice or rats that might have nested in the furniture.

Guildford’s incinerator was opened in 1910 and was situated in the Council Depot near the river, in Woking Road. It was refurbished in the 1930’s but was closed a few years later.

The ‘Hotties’

The Guildford incinerator wasn’t used to generate electricity though it did have an interesting and very welcome by product for the locals.

When researching for the oral history of Bellfields we were asked “do you know about the hotties?” No, what was that!

A brick structure had been built in the water by the river bank with an outlet from the incinerator. What came out was hot water pouring straight into the river in this enclosed space. This area became know as the ‘hotties’ as the locals could go down there with a towel and soap and have a bath. This was very welcome at a time when most of the houses around the Woking Road and Stoughton Road areas had no bathrooms. Water had to be heated up to fill the tin bath, quite a laborious job.

There could be several furnaces the refuse was placed in. It had to be sorted by hand after the dust carts, a horse and cart at this time, had emptied the household dustbins (hence the name for the workers as ‘dustmen’) and taken it all to the depot. Here the sorted refuse, a very unpleasant task, was placed on a conveyor which led to various furnaces.

Clinker is a generic name given to waste from industrial processes, particularly those that involve smelting metals, welding, burning fossil fuels and use of a blacksmith’s forge. Clinker often forms a loose, dark deposit consisting of waste materials such as coke, coal, slag, charcoal and grit. Clinker often has a glassy look to it, usually because of the formation of molten silica compounds during processing. Clinker generally contains too little carbon to be of any value as fuel. The term is also applied to the byproduct of combustion and heating by those who use anthracite or lignite coal-fired boilers.

If anyone has any photos, information or stories about the Guildford dust destructor please let me know at browne@ntlworld.com.

I would love to hear any stories or history that you would like to share as there is a plan to update Bellfields Remembered and reprint the book. Please contact me, Carol Brown, at browne@ntlworld.com or come to the Bellfields History Tent on July 13th for the Fun Day on the Green.