Back in the 19th century and early 20th, the energy economy was for all practical purposes, coal. Unlike today where coal is burnt in a relatively small number of locations, most of which are power stations, coal was burnt in small quantities in millions of urban locations. Just look to the skyline in most English cities and you will see a chimney of some sort. Most homes had one or more open fires and a range for cooking, all of which were producing ash. Sometimes ash was separated from other household rubbish and collected separately, sometimes the dustin was the last resting place of all of a household's filth. Ash as domestic waste lives on, in 2004 the council supplied me with a plastic wheelie bin which is embossed with the slogan "No Hot Ashes".
Finding a use for this stuff was making a virtue of necessity. My ten sacks of ash had been used to provide support during the construction of brick wall, one of the faces of which was sloping. After a century, the ash had become soil and plant life had caused the structure to degrade requiring a rebuild. Ash had also been used in the mortar and this made it easy to reclaim the bricks, however, they were of poor quality and I opted to use new ones. The originals were FreeCycled and may now be part of a garden path. The man who collected them told me that ash was frequently used in Victorian civil engineering as a fill for canal and railway embankments.
What was once Victorian rubbish can now be collectable history and ancient tips are sought out by bottle and pot lid collectors. On learning this decided to sieve my ash before disposing of it. Whilst there were no great discoveries other than an almost complete egg cup, several bits of broken clay pipe and fragments of jars as few of which had writing. The pile of fine ash from this exercise can be used as a soil improver, as there were many many species of plant established in the wall, there may be some truth in this.
A few fragments have various combinations of letters which suggest they are from local companies suggesting that the ash was also local.
As was also used in brick making, having seen a lot of broken bricks recently, I would suggest that bricks with a high ash content are of low quality, but that might just be the result of a small sample. Ash is also known as "breeze", this has been used in conjunction with cement to to produce a large building block known as a Breeze Block.
Clinker, which is the lumpier bits of ash was often used as a base for concrete used in step, pathways and standing areas:
An allotment holder told me that ash was often dug in allotments where the soil contained a lot of clay, this made it lighter and prevented it from becoming waterlogged. One use attracts mixed feelings, sometime back a local resident disposed of his ash by spreading it on a rough, steep track that ran by his house, this made walking a lot easier, but, for regular users it required additional shoe cleaning. As I work from home, my dress code does not require me to have clean shoes, so I was grateful for his efforts.
Finding uses for ash was a form of recycling, in many towns it is normal to separate items that be recycled, e.g. bottle, tins, paper, plastic etc. from material which can only be disposed of in landfill or incinerators.
Postscript - 03-Jan-2015
Recently I was walking around the northern part of Brighton where many roads are build on sloping ground and where retaining walls are common. One such wall was dark grey with fragments of pottery visible on the surface (I have a bucket full of similar stuff). I'm guessing that this wall was in part a mixture of town ash and cement:
Why is broken pottery such a common feature of the ground surrounding Victorian and Edwardian buildings?
What was once Victorian rubbish can now be collectable history and ancient tips are sought out by bottle and pot lid collectors. On learning this decided to sieve my ash before disposing of it. Whilst there were no great discoveries other than an almost complete egg cup, several bits of broken clay pipe and fragments of jars as few of which had writing. The pile of fine ash from this exercise can be used as a soil improver, as there were many many species of plant established in the wall, there may be some truth in this.
A few fragments have various combinations of letters which suggest they are from local companies suggesting that the ash was also local.
As was also used in brick making, having seen a lot of broken bricks recently, I would suggest that bricks with a high ash content are of low quality, but that might just be the result of a small sample. Ash is also known as "breeze", this has been used in conjunction with cement to to produce a large building block known as a Breeze Block.
Clinker, which is the lumpier bits of ash was often used as a base for concrete used in step, pathways and standing areas:
An allotment holder told me that ash was often dug in allotments where the soil contained a lot of clay, this made it lighter and prevented it from becoming waterlogged. One use attracts mixed feelings, sometime back a local resident disposed of his ash by spreading it on a rough, steep track that ran by his house, this made walking a lot easier, but, for regular users it required additional shoe cleaning. As I work from home, my dress code does not require me to have clean shoes, so I was grateful for his efforts.
Finding uses for ash was a form of recycling, in many towns it is normal to separate items that be recycled, e.g. bottle, tins, paper, plastic etc. from material which can only be disposed of in landfill or incinerators.
Postscript - 03-Jan-2015
Recently I was walking around the northern part of Brighton where many roads are build on sloping ground and where retaining walls are common. One such wall was dark grey with fragments of pottery visible on the surface (I have a bucket full of similar stuff). I'm guessing that this wall was in part a mixture of town ash and cement:
Why is broken pottery such a common feature of the ground surrounding Victorian and Edwardian buildings?
