MANY thanks to all the brave souls – and there were way more than 100 of them – who attended last weekend’s Friends of the Denes guided walk which commemorated the 100th anniversary of the opening of the first of the denes, off Woodland Road, in Darlington, as a public park.
Memories led the walk, and ended up with a nice dollop of dog poo on the toe of our white trainer.
READ THE FULL HISTORY OF THE DENES, WHICH CELEBRATE THEIR 100TH ANNIVERSARY THIS MONTH
This, though, felt appropriate because the denes have long been at the forefront of the clean-up campaign. In the early 1960s, the town’s first dog toilet was installed in the “tenny dene”. It was a sandpit, fenced off to stop kids stumbling into it, and it was a park-keeper’s first job every morning to rake off the previous day’s doings.
It didn’t last long.
But it was the state of the denes that inspired in 1989 the formation of the Darlington Community Hygiene Concern (DCHC) by concerned residents to pressure the council into taking action. Headlines in The Northern Echo suggest that for months, dog dirt was the hottest issue in town.
The council trialled a revolutionary motorised poop-scooper, but decided not to purchase, and then sent an officer to Leicester to review the latest clean-up technology.
As a junior reporter, Memories was in the environmental health committee meeting when the officer reported back. He used slides to illustrate how Leicester had installed taps underneath which the dog was expected to do its dirty work. The dog-owner would then turn on the tap and the water would flush the doo down a ramp and into a drain.
Unfortunately, said the officer, when he tried the system, the water pressure was too powerful and it resulted in him being hit by a thoroughly unpleasant splashback shower.
Without a hint of amusement, he told how he had been wearing a full length, light-coloured gaberdine coat which had had to go to the dry cleaners, the bill for which he was claiming on expenses.
So Darlington did not go down the Leicester route, but within six months of the formation of the DCHC it had introduced poop-scoop by-laws, whereby dog-owners had to carry means to clean up after their pets. It employed two dog wardens who prosecuted the first four people who failed to comply – they were fined £25.
Thirty years later, dog mess is clearly still an issue, but, one dollop aside that we managed to find, the denes looked impeccable and all the dogs that enjoyed the walk were scrupulously tended to. The walk also raised a couple of hundred pounds for the Friends. Thank-you.
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