NOOKS AND CRANNIES



When was the skip invented, and by whom? Was it a product of inner-city gentrification? ALTHOUGH skips have been used in the mining industry for a long time, the first use of a skip-like container removed by a lorry for rubbish disposal was probably in Southport in 1922. It came about as a result of Edwin Walker, of the lorry manufacturer, Pagefield, meeting Southport's borough engineer. He, like other towns' engineers, faced the problem of growing distances between household refuse collection rounds and dumping grounds. Horse-drawn refuse carts were effective in town, but not in covering the distances to waste tips. The resulting Pagefield system used 300 cu ft horse-drawn containers on 20-inch diameter wheels which, when full, were winched on to the back of a Pagefield lorry to make a relatively speedy trip to a distant dump. A more up-to-date system, not relying on horses, but still created by municipal enterprise and needs, and not by the purely commercial initiatives of modern-day skip hire operators, was launched by the Letchworth firm of S & D in 1926. Harry Shelvoke and his partner, James Drewry, had developed a revolutionary, small-wheeled petrol-engined truck - the Freighter - in 1922. It had hand control to make things easier for ex-horsemen to drive. Scores of applications followed, including in 1926 a system featuring sideways-mounted skips for the Marylebone area of London. Several skips could be carried across the chassis at once. The Freighter, with all its different applications, was such a good idea that it is time someone re-invented it. The present day skip is, environmentalists please note, less clean than those early Pagefield and S & D systems - they had closely-fitting lids on their containers. The growth of DIY as a leisure activity and the need to replace parts of Victorian houses (not just repair them) have probably contributed as much to skip growth as outright gentrification of our inner suburbs. Stephen Jolly, Milton Keynes, Bedfordshire. ALTHOUGH the skip may have changed the face of gentrification, that process is older than the skip. I was taught about gentrification in A-level geography in the 1960s, but first encountered skips in the early 1970s, working in a small engineering factory in Reading. The factory waste was thrown into a skip, supplied by a firm from Ewelme called Grundon. The command was always 'Put it in the grundon', and it was only much later that I discovered that this remarkably apt name was not the correct term. I still think of them as 'grundons'. Rob Close, Ayr, Scotland. My father had a road haulage firm in Lincoln (A Suthrell Haulage Ltd) from the 1940s onwards and I think he was one of the first pioneers of the general use of skips for urban environments in the 1960s - I'd be really interested to know if this is true... dr charlotte suthrell, oxford (previously Lincoln) England Hi charlotte I drove for Suthrells from 1973 on the haulage side I think at that time bert had 5 skip wagons He was one of the fist to have Luggers as we called them. Regards Norman norman, penrith england



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