Old Pembroke's Strange and often Smelly Jobs

 by Melanie Phillips

The Raddle Man.  

Raddle is kind of reddish clay and can be found in abundance around by the Point House Angle.  The Raddle man would collect his red clay and mix it well.  He then sold it to the farmers who used it to mark their sheep with a letter to distinguish his flock from the neighbouring farmers.  A nasty side effect of Raddle was that it was absorbed into the skin and gave the Raddle man a completely red appearance.  He never stayed in one place for long because his appearance made the children scream and their mams threatened children with the Raddle man because of his resemblance to the devil.  His was a lonely old job, but one which he chose, because once he stopped selling Raddle his skin would return to its normal colour.  He obviously enjoyed the solitude of the open road, stopping only to mix and sell more Raddle to farmers on his way.  Thomas Hardy immortalised him in his book The Return of the Native.

 

The Tanner. 

The Tanners premises were situated way out of town because of the stink and smell of the festering cowhides.  His Tannery smelled of rancid fat, rotten meat, and dog mess. The Tanyard in Pembroke is still there and was built outside the town walls where nobody could smell it. The Tanners used a foul substance called Album Grecum to polish their saddles and in the tanning of hides.  Album Grecum was the posh name for dogs white excrement known to the Tanners as ‘Bate.’ Someone had discovered that if you added water to this vile mess and stirred it around, you got an evil smelling gravy that you could then use to pour over the hides in order to soften leather. The hides were then left to ferment in the Bate for a few weeks. When this procedure was finished, the soup was rubbed into saddles or any type of leather, and the result was a glorious shine. However, the Album Grecum had first to be found and the Tanner gave this job to:

 

The collectors of Pure.

This was a strange and pretty name for the most disgusting of jobs. Pure was another name for dogs white excrement. The collectors of Pure consisted of a motley band of tramps, old crones and street urchins who would earn a halfpenny for every bucket of Pure that was returned to the Tanner. He would then leave a pile of it outside his premises to heat and putrefy nicely before he rubbed it into his saddles.  Collectors of Pure fought over their patch very much like the Pembrokeshire potato pickers fought over theirs.  Little wonder then that the Tanner and the Pure seller were bosom pals and drank at the same pub which was usually owned by a Tanner and was therefore known as the Tanners Arms.  Other stinky frequenters of his establishment would probably been made up of Toshers, the scavenger men who worked the Pembroke river looking for bits of scrap metal, gold fillings etc.  They all smelled so badly that it is of no surprise that a Tanner always married a Tanner and or someone of a like ilk. I bet the local coppers didn’t check to see if there were lock- ins at their pubs. They must have left them severely alone. Phew!

 

The Rabbit Factory. 

The Rabbit factory was situated on the site of the old Pembroke  Tanyard. The rabbit skins were tanned there before being made into fur gloves. The premises belonged to Mr.George Wheeler who owned two rabbit factories, one being ‘up the line.’ Local rabbit catchers supplied the rabbits. My grandfather being a poacher probably supplied a few! The workers were employed to skin the rabbits and then store their carcases in a large freezer until they could be transported to Mr. Wheeler’s second factory.

 

Mr. Fred Dando worked at the factory as a skinner and it was said that he could skin and paunch a rabbit in ten seconds!  At one time there was to be a competition between him and a skinner from the other factory as to who could skin a rabbit the fastest, but the event never materialised!

 

Unfortunately the business went into decline and was forced to close when the government introduced Myxomatosis, to control the rabbit population. The disease decimated the population so greatly that nine out of ten rabbits were exterminated. The factory closed in the 1950s.

 

The Culm Provider. 

This was a dirty job.

 

Culm is the name for slack coal or more specifically coal dust.  Up until the 1940s, Pembroke and the surrounding villages such as Angle made themselves Ball Fires.  The Culm was delivered to your home usually by W.Colley and Son and then the collector of slime would be called upon. He was usually a member of the household or a kindly neighbour who dug the slime out from the Castle pond or any Pill or creek that was near your village. The slime was mixed with the Culm and made into balls.  The balls were stacked by the fireplace and when dried they were placed in the fire grate and lit. The balls made an excellent ‘stummed’ down fire, a fire that gave off a glow as opposed to a roaring flame.  The Angle people say that the Point House pub had a ball fire that had not gone out for over a hundred years and was in the Guinness book of records.  Those people who were better off had a coal fire.

 

The Guillemot Egg Collector.

This was such a dangerous and smelly job that it was usually carried out by fearless youths. The death rate for this job was great and it was recorded that around five thousand of these young boys fell to their deaths every year.  They descended the sheer Angle and Stackpole cliffs with the aid of a rope if they were lucky, otherwise they had to rely on being sure- footed. Stack Rocks would have been a favourite place and here they gingerly climbed over the cliff edge in search of the guillemot’s eggs.  Unbelievable obstacles were placed in their way.  Firstly the eggs were balanced on a nest on the cliff edge and were also conical which meant that they would roll from the collectors grasp.  They were also covered in a protective layer of guano that made them slippery to hold. As if this wasn’t bad enough the aggressive birds would dive bomb them and try to peck out their eyes. If the lads were successful the eggs were placed in a leather bag that was slung around the boys necks and carefully brought home to mam.  They tasted fishy and pretty awful but they were also full of protein that was essential for a poor family’s health.

 

 The Lime Burner

My great-grandfather drove the lime cart for Sir Thomas Meyrick on the Bush Estate.  Almost everyone in Pembroke worked for the Meyricks ‘of Bush’ and my Grandfather and his family were no exception.  They lived in a tied cottage on the estate.

 

Burning lime was a terribly dangerous job.  You can still see the lime- kilns dotted here and there throughout Pembroke.  limestone was taken from Catshole limestone quarry where it was cut into small pieces  It was then driven to the lime kilns . A fire was lit underneath the kiln and the small limestone pieces were loaded in. The heat which the kiln gave off was unbearable.  The lime was used for a variety of things. The building trade used it instead of cement and it was also used to restore the Ph balance of a sour soil and made the earth into something more manageable for the farmer. Slaked lime was used as a white wash for cottages whilst lime wash on the inside walls of the house kept the bugs away.

 

The lime burned in the kiln and was raked out from the bottom.  This is where it became dangerous.  Pokers and Rakers were employed to remove the lime, but great care was needed in case the lime blew into the Raker’s eyes.  Lime in the eyes almost certainly spelt blindness.

 

The Gong Scourer or Gong Fermor.

 

Lastly I cannot finish without mentioning the Gong Scourer.  Pembroke Castle had a team of Gong Scourers, as did every castle. Gong was the old name for a toilet. Whilst William Marshall and his family were using their six- seater toilet and their Garderobe, the lesser occupants of the castle were using the chute lavatories.  The idea was that most of the contents of the ‘Jake’ were flushed out into the moat, but a great deal of it clung to the insides of the chute.  Little boys were employed to scale the inside of these closed areas and scour the sides of them.  Just imagine the fetid air, the excrement that fell onto your head and into your mouth.  What a job!

 

So when next you feel fed up with your job or you circumstances in general, spare a thought for all these people whose jobs are now thankfully defunct, and especially spare a thought for the Gong Scourer. Poor Sod!!!