Smells of the past

[Ian Hargrave]

1 hour ago, Darius43 said:

I remember a coffee shop called Cawardines near the top of Blackboy Hill in Bristol in the mid 1980s.  The bitter smell of roasting coffee beans emanating from their premises was almost overwhelming when I was walking past en route from the University to the Halls in Stoke Bishop.

 

Cheers

 

Darius

 
Twenty years prior to this social life after lectures revolved around the Berkeley at the top of Park Street. Now the University Tower and its surroundings are history but apparently still used …well so my son,who is an academic unlike his father informs me. How time goes by…

 

 

[phil_sutters]

8 hours ago, Mallard60022 said:

Cabbage and Steamed Pudding (1960s style). 

When I started in the Welfare Department, later Social Services, junior office staff and trainee social workers in our area office, had to cover for Meals-on-Wheels escorts. They would each deliver about 50 meals in small vans with a driver. The meals were in round aluminium dishes with loose lids, so the smells of the cabbage, custard, stew, etc would fill the van and for someone like me, who had been car sick from an early age, it was not a pleasant duty. The dishes were kept warm by charcoal in troughs under the racks, so any spillages could result in further odours, as the food burnt.

[phil_sutters]

1 hour ago, Darius43 said:

I remember a coffee shop called Cawardines near the top of Blackboy Hill in Bristol in the mid 1980s.  The bitter smell of roasting coffee beans emanating from their premises was almost overwhelming when I was walking past en route from the University to the Halls in Stoke Bishop.

 

Cheers

 

Darius

I was at the College of Commerce at the bottom of Park Street, around 1970 as it became part of Bristol Polytechnic. Part of the college was over the Harvey's sherry cellar, from which a discrete but pleasant smell arose.

[leavesontheline]

The smell as you get off the train (or out of a car) in any town or city with a brewing industry. Edinburgh and Burton are two that immediately spring to my mind.

 

Within a very short space of time (never sure how long) you acclimatise to it and no longer notice the smell, until you next leave and return to the place.....

[Andy Kirkham]

32 minutes ago, Ian Hargrave said:

 
Twenty years prior to this social life after lectures revolved around the Berkeley at the top of Park Street. 

 

Now a Wetherspoons

[Andy Kirkham]

1 hour ago, pH said:

The smell on the Glasgow Subway before the modernization in the 1970s. Supposed to be left over from the tarred ropes used for haulage before electrification.

The carriages on the modernized Subway had an antiseptic smell like Germolene.

[SR71]

Any small 80's hatch back with cloth/vinal interior on a damp winters mid morning after it's sat for a few days. Sitting there wiping the mist off the windows while keeping the engine going as you wait for the 4th cylinder to come on song.

Edited November 8, 2022 by SR71

[Dunsignalling]

Another smell one quickly stopped noticing.

 

The cellophane factory at Bridgwater. Early approach warning for Taunton passengers on down Padds.

 

Wonderful for clearing blocked sinuses!

 

John

Edited November 8, 2022 by Dunsignalling

[phil_sutters]

1 minute ago, Dunsignalling said:

The cellophane factory at Bridgwater. Early approach warning for Taunton passengers on down Padds.

 

After being in the town for half an hour, though, I couldn't smell it any more.

 

Wonderful for clearing blocked sinuses!

 

John

It was worse on the bus into Bridgy. You were nearer and it took longer to get past!

[Nearholmer]

Some types of brick-making give off a terrible rotten eggs smell. There was a village near here blighted by it until the brickworks closed down, a few years after which it suddenly became a desirable place to live, popular for the first time n probably a century.

[Welchester]

2 hours ago, leavesontheline said:

The smell as you get off the train (or out of a car) in any town or city with a brewing industry. Edinburgh and Burton are two that immediately spring to my mind.

 

Within a very short space of time (never sure how long) you acclimatise to it and no longer notice the smell, until you next leave and return to the place.....

 

Oddly enough, Cheltenham in the 1970s was one such place, although brewing didn't happen every day. I noticed the smell if I decided not to go straight home from school, but wander around the town centre. The school had been next to the brewery, which would have been much worse, but moved to the outskirts in the mid 60s.

[pH]

2 hours ago, phil_sutters said:

The dishes were kept warm by charcoal in troughs under the racks, so any spillages could result in further odours, as the food burnt.

 That reminded me of another smell. Greenock was a sugar-refining town. Part of the process of producing white sugar involved the use of charcoal to remove the colour from raw sugar. The charcoal used was made by the charring of bones. The area of town where it was made stunk! There’s no more sugar refining in Greenock, but I swear that the last time I was there, there was still a residual smell in that area.

[Ian Smeeton]

6 minutes ago, pH said:

 That reminded me of another smell. Greenock was a sugar-refining town. Part of the process of producing white sugar involved the use of charcoal to remove the colour from raw sugar. The charcoal used was made by the charring of bones. The area of town where it was made stunk! There’s no more sugar refining in Greenock, but I swear that the last time I was there, there was still a residual smell in that area.

That smell seemed to be particularly bad on a Sunday evening as we were returning from visiting the Grandparents.

 

I remember it well!!

 

Regards

 

Ian

[Wickham Green too]

20 minutes ago, pH said:

... Greenock was a sugar-refining town. ...

One sugar-related smell I've heard of - if you get my drift - but not witnessed, was from the maggots infesting wagon-loads of beet arriving at refineries.

[Morello Cherry]

2 hours ago, phil_sutters said:

When I started in the Welfare Department, later Social Services, junior office staff and trainee social workers in our area office, had to cover for Meals-on-Wheels escorts. They would each deliver about 50 meals in small vans with a driver. The meals were in round aluminium dishes with loose lids, so the smells of the cabbage, custard, stew, etc would fill the van and for someone like me, who had been car sick from an early age, it was not a pleasant duty. The dishes were kept warm by charcoal in troughs under the racks, so any spillages could result in further odours, as the food burnt.

 

When I worked cooking for meals on wheels where we were they were distributed by volunteers (WRVS). You would cook the meals then you'd put a bag in the insulated box and put the meals in the bagged box. The idea being that if something got spilt you would just throw away the bag. The problem was that the volunteers would just stick the boxes whereever when they brought them back and if you were unlucky they would leave bag with all the cold veg smelling water in the box and if you didn't catch it you would get quite the hit the next morning.

 

Another town that stinks is Ploiesti in Romania. It is an oil town and there are I think at least three refineries there. You can smell it from miles away and I always get an minging headache from the fumes.

 

[Steamport Southport]

3 hours ago, Hroth said:

 

If, as I suspect, thats the Up platform at James Street, you have to wonder why folk are waiting to travel the short distance to Liverpool Central on the train instead of walking or getting a bus.  Its just a brisk walk along Lord Street and Church Street!

 

 

 

Paid?

 

Don't want to walk past the great unwashed?

 

More likely it's raining as usual.

[Martino]

One that no one’s mentioned.   The smell of Dai Woodham’s at Barry.  A mixture of rust, damp boiler lagging and of nature taking over.

 

Early ‘70s car air freshener ‘Feu Orange’

 

Walking onto a London deep tube station.

 

The smell walking onto a 1970’s Boeing 747.  Aircraft don’t smell like that anymore.

 

Ink from dip in inkwells at school in the late ‘50s.

 

Castro R at a race track.

 

Oh, and as an ex mobile disco jockey, the smell of opening a record (vinyl singles) box the day after the last gig - smoke, beer, perfume and probably sweat.   I’ve got closed boxes that were last used in early 2000s gigs that produce the same smell even now,

[08221]

9 hours ago, pH said:

 Greenock was a sugar-refining town.

Thats bought back another childhood memory!

 

In Fenny Stratford was a Valentine, Ord and Nagel factory - there was always a very strong sweet smell of sugar whenever you went anywhere near it. As we grew up, we used to watch the football at Bletchley Towns Manor Fields ground which was right next to the factory - complete with the very strong sugary aroma - good times!

[rodent279]

Back in the mid 70's, we moved from Lytham to Troon, in Scotland.  We couldn't move straight in to the house, so Dad bought a caravan, & we spent 6 weeks living in it, on a site that was just the over the other side of the railway & road from the end of the runway at Prestwick Airport.

To this day (frighteningly close to 50yrs ago!), the smell of aircraft fuel takes me back to those days. We used to get woken up by the incoming 747 (PanAm?) from Canada at 7am, flying literally about 100m over the van.

 

One smell that I do not miss at all is the foul reek of tobacco smoke & beer soaked into clothing, after a night in several smoky pubs. Good riddance to that!

Edited November 9, 2022 by rodent279

[Charles]

I always wondered what the distinctive smell in the Glasgow Subway was, until about 15 years ago, doing a job in a Union Carbide plastic film factory here in Sydney.

 

Clambering over various equipment I came across an Ozone generator, the purpose of which was to remove electrical charge from the film.

 

My nose immediately told me Glasgow Subway, and I have no doubt that's what is was.

 

The Ozone created by the arcing between

the carriage pick-up and the wall mounted

electrical feed rail which lay at about shoulder height.

 

Charles 

[Morello Cherry]

A more recent one - the airfreshner/disinfectant that FGW used in their HSTs. Never smelt it anywhere else but very distinctive.

 

Another sensory experience. The way the whole DMU carriage would rhythmically vibrate when sat in the platform including the windows.

 

I guess because I had a lot of holidays in North Wales as a child Harbour Station had a lot of distinctive smells/sounds. The briny smell from the sea but also the jangley sound of the wind in the ropes/wires of the boats moored there. (A similar sound can be heard in Massive Attack's Unfinished Sympathy - so that song immediately takes me back to Bristol and to Harbour Station).

[didcot]

Being dragged to the market in the Oxpens in Oxford and smelling Morrells Brewery. Must have been late 70s early 80s. Never did like Morrells or Morlumps I mean Morlands.

 

The smell of crumpets toasted on a coal fire.

[Reorte]

15 hours ago, APOLLO said:

Ahh - Coal fires in houses. In my youth we had one in the kitchen, a huge cast iron range that also heated the water.

A lot of the time when I was a kid we still had coal fires, although only for a year was that and no central heating. I loved it, still do love the smell of coal smoke (although I'm glad I never got to experience full-on smog).

 

Quote

At least in Wigan we still have Uncle Joes mintball factory just at the rear of Wallgate station, a pleasure to walk past when they are boiling up a fresh batch of mint balls !!!!!!!!!

Closest I get to that is occasionally walking past the Swizzels factory, with the smell of Refreshers in the air.

[St Enodoc]

18 hours ago, Nearholmer said:

There was a very sour-smelling vinegar works on the up side coming into London Bridge too.

The smell from the British Celanese factory at Spondon was always the signal to start getting ready to alight at Derby.

[pH]

1 hour ago, Charles said:

My nose immediately told me Glasgow Subway, and I have no doubt that's what is was.

 

The Ozone created by the arcing between

the carriage pick-up and the wall mounted

electrical feed rail which lay at about shoulder height.

 

Charles 

Opinions include that it was from the substance used to lubricate the original traction cables:
http://www.hiddenglasgow.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=15&p=227306

 

or bacteria that grew in the tunnels:

https://www.heraldscotland.com/news/12169196.something-to-be-sniffed-at/