Kicking up a stink about historic stenchpipes

However, the sewers had a terrible habit of allowing gas to build up within their cylindrical confines, and when the pressure became too great, they exploded, and covered everyone with a shower of…

To overcome this, the Victorians inserted the stenchpipe – a cast iron pipe, 20ft or 30ft high, that was usually at a sewer’s highest point. It allowed the noxious vapours to escape harmlessly into the atmosphere high above the heads – and the noses – of the people.

Grand Victorian sensibilities decreed that these stenchpipes, or stinkpipes, should be ornate rather than plain, with fluting up the sides which opened into rather grand blooms at the top.

The ornate top of a stinkpipe in Hurworth

We believe there are about 100 historic stench, or vent pipes, still popping up out of pavements in the North East, as we list below – have we left any out?

But in Durham City there is something even better than a stinkpipe: there is the remains of a Webb's Patent Sewer Gas Destructor.

Mark Nimmins kindly pointed out its presence in the old picture (above) that we published a fortnight ago of North Bailey in May 1964. The picture was taken to illustrate how the old was replacing the new, how the smaller Victorian-style gas lamps were being replaced by modern electric lights.

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But the gas lamp was, as Mark pointed out, a Webb’s Patent Sewer Gas Destructor, the ultimate in green streetlighting. A line of them which lit – albeit dimly – North and South Bailey, although we think only one survives to this day.

The destructor was the ingenious idea of Joseph Edmund Webb, of Birmingham, who patented it on March 2, 1895.

The cast iron column of the destructor acted like a stenchpipe, drawing off the gases from the sewers below, but rather than just allow them to dissipate like a conventional pipe, the destructor set fire to them in a lamp so that they illuminated the streets. They seem to have burned with a rather dark orangey flame, although Mr Webb’s adverts claimed they shed enough light to read a newspaper at 50 yards.

At first, the destructor was only fuelled by sewer gas, but often there was not enough of that to keep them burning 24 hours a day. Therefore the flame went out, and what gas there was filled the streets with a malodorous farty whiff.

To remedy this, the destructors were connected to the town gas supply so that they had a constant supply of fuel, rather than just a nasty occasional gust.

Detail on the stench pipe on North Bailey in Durham City

They were so successful that Mr Webb was able to open a London office in 1901 at 11 Poultry EC – Poultry being a street near the Bank of England in the heart of Westminster. This is the address cast into the base of the one remaining destructor in North Bailey, which means it must have been made before 1918 when Webb’s offices moved.

Plumbing practices changed after the First World War, and most buildings installed their own ventpipes so the street stenchpipe and the gas destructor became unnecessary.

The ones in North Bailey continued to generate light until the black-outs of the Second World War. When their flames were extinguished, because their connection to the sewer was still live, they emitted a vile smell, and so they had to be sealed off. This meant that in peacetime they could never be re-ignited and, as our picture shows, they were replaced in 1964.

A couple of leftovers survived this cull, although we think that just the one remains today (above).

But we think ten have been restored in Whitley Bay and Monkseaton, and Blyth has restored five. Sheffield, because it was built on seven hills which meant there were lots of pockets for gas to collect in, is the capital of the destructor with 22 still in situ, three of which apparently still work.

In London, there is just one destructor, off The Strand in Carting Lane – can you guess, boys and girls, the nickname of this lane?

Durham’s destructor looks increasingly dishevelled, whereas really it should be honoured as a climate-saving breakthrough that was decades ahead of its time. It doesn't rely on electricity generated by fossil-fuel burning power stations. Instead it takes methane, which would otherwise be emitted into the atmosphere, and turns it into carbon dioxide.

Although carbon dioxide is a greenhouse gas, it is 21 times less damaging than methane. So in a green future, amid wind power, solar power, nuclear power and tidal power, why isn’t there a place for old-fashioned fart power?

The top of a stinkpipe in the village of Barton

IS it possible to get to the bottom of all the surviving stinkpipes?

A pretty one in Hurworth, with stars around the top, was relocated in 2009 from the entrance to Rockliffe Hall hotel and is now amid the new houses on the site.

There’s a very simple stinker in Victoria Avenue, Bishop Auckland; there’s a fabulously ornate one standing proud in the middle of the pavement in Richmond Road, Stockton, an extremely leafy late 19th Century street. There’s the bottom of an attractive pipe opposite the petrol station in Anchorage Hill in Richmond; there’s another tall one that’s always shrouded in overgrowth at the southern end of the village of Barton.

Our area's most fabulous stinkpipe in Richmond Road, Stockton

In Darlington, there’s a fluted beauty (above) tucked away among trees in the dene off Vine Street, and there’s another fine example in North Lodge Park (below).

But stinkpipes do get fallen. Only 10 years ago, Carrville, on the edge of Durham, had several all bearing the name of the local foundryman, George Hauxwell, who had cast them, but we believe they have recently disappeared, and in Darlington, where plans are afoot for a realignment of the roads at the entrance to Cockerton, the first casualty has been the stinker on Staindrop Road. It had once been a splendid affair, with “Durham County Council” cast around its top, although for the last years of its life it was shrouded in ivy (below):

Please, if you know of any other stinkpipes, let us know: chris.lloyd@nne.co.uk.

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