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Smells Of The Past

The smell of a privet hedge always takes me back to my childhood. Everyone seemed to have them years ago, and whenever I walk past one and smell the perfume of the leaves, I am transported back to Handsworth when I was young.
 
Jayell said:
The smell of a privet hedge always takes me back to my childhood. Everyone seemed to have them years ago, and whenever I walk past one and smell the perfume of the leaves, I am transported back to Handsworth when I was young.
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Ours is flowering smells lovely, we ignore the looks of passers by, as we won't cut it till it has finished. Partner calls it private, but it does keep us that way.
 
Same for me Judy. Vividly reminds me of playing in the alleyways around Kingstanding or leaning on the front garden hedge. Everyone had a front garden edged with privet in the 1950s/60s. Viv.
 
Used to walk along Kyrwicks Lane from Highgate Rd to go to The Alhambra picture house on Mosley Rd and went past the back of Hawley 's Bakery. When the bread was just out of the ovens they would bring out on large trays onto the loading bay for the vans to take it away.
No wrapping, no covers just hundreds of newly baked loaves wafting that beautiful smell out into the street.
I bake my own bread these days and I still have that aroma seeking me out like in those old Bistro ads.
 
Hi Tim...I lived in Oughton Road at the rear of Hayleys Bakery and one of my enduring childhood memories is that smell of fresh baked bread..My mum used to send us kids in through the back door to buy loaves straight from the oven...Happy Days...Roy
 
As was mentioned previously, the smells of Ansells & HP were the greatest. I worked in Aston for 12 years and never found a problem with the aroma. Whenever i think of Brum i still remember the lovely smell. Such a pity it's all gone.
 
Morturn said:
In the late eighties I moved to a small mining village in South Derbyshire. As most of the population were miners in those days, they had concessionary coal, so there was no gas in the village.


There was always the small of coal fires in the air, which then bought back this forgotten memories of how it smelled in Brum when I was a kid.




It was even better when someone’s chimney caught fire, which happened on a regular basis.
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hi mort..i know you may think me crazy but i visit the black country museum at least 6 times a year just to get a good whiff of the coal fires burning and to see the smoke coming from the chimneys...that smell brings back so many happy memories to me...:)
 
Where we live a lot of the home heating is done by wood burning stoves (there is no aces to piped gas).
It is a real pleasure when someone is burning good quality hardwood as I take my evening walk.
 
Not sure if I've mentioned this before, but two more; the sun on cresoted fencing and hot Tarmac. Tarmac being laid vividly reminds me of the summer our road was resurfaced. Be about the 1960s. And like Lyn who's drawn to visiting the Black Country Museum, I'll hover where there's road resurfacing in full swing. Not as much fun as a visit to BCM but the smell takes me back. Viv.
 
You might like this too Mike. Although not sure if it has real tar in it. Still available today. I liked this soap but preferred the smell of Camay. Viv.
 

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oldbrit said:
The smell of new baked bread at the bakery on Church St (Harveys?) in Yardley
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I thought at first you were thinking of Harding's bakery but that was on the Cov Road just off the Swan Island which is some way from Church Road (can't find a Church St). We always had Harding's bread delivered - the vans were brown I think. They had the wording 'Hardings Steam Bakery' on them. When I was little I often wondered how you could use steam to bake bread as that would make the loaves soggy but now I realise the steam heated the ovens!
 
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Bad smell when the milkman's horse decided to relieve itself outside the house. We used to have to flush it away with buckets of water. The manure however went straight on the garden if we got to it first!
 
Yes Jukebox, steam was used to raise the oven temperature to 500 degreesF. According to the botham.co.uk site "Steel tubes containing water are heated by either gas, coal or coke, or by oil until the steam rises to a temperature of 500º F."

Viv.
 
Don't let's forget the baked spud and hot chestnut vendors. Delicious street smells in winter. This image is of an early vender carrying hot potatoes in a potato can. Think the 'can' has a small fire underneath (to keep the potatoes warm?). I assume these were baked somewhere else, maybe at the local bakery? Viv.

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I remember the bloke with the hot spuds and chestnuts outside New street station, and the lovely smells wafting down to the platforms.
he kept them hot in a tray beneath the oven.
But another one smell I used to hate when getting the old pram filled with 'Coke' almost straight from the furnace at the Nechells gas works, choking!! us kids,:eek: happy days,;)
 
The smell of steam engines always does it for me....I remember when I was small going on the train to the usual Brummie destinations of Weston and Rhyl - a few years ago went on the Gloucestershire/Worcestershire Railway and the smell of the smoke took me straight back to my early days when train travel was a real adventure! I can just about remember the old (old) New Street Station with the central wakway over the platforms and the clouds of steam and smoke shooting out of the train chimneys.
 
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