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News
Now available from York Archaeological Trust Publications:
Rich in All but Money: Life in
Hungate 1900-1938
Revised edition (2007)
by Van Wilson
The first in a series of oral history
booklets published in conjunction with the Hungate excavations.
It presents a fascinating view of life in Hungate in the early
20th century as seen through the eyes of the people who lived
there at the time.
Price: £9.99 plus p&p
Contact ckyriacou@yorkarchaeology.co.uk to order.
A Flush With
The Past
The excavation of a mid
19th - early 20th century communal toilet block
Construction work is now starting on the new £150m
Hungate urban neighbourhood. City of York Council
granted detailed planning permission in February for
the first phase of the development, which consists
of a total of 163 apartments and town houses. As work
on the new neighbourhood, being created by Hungate
(York) Regeneration Ltd. progresses, archaeologists
of York Archaeological Trust have been uncovering
startling details of what life must have been like
for people living in the Hungate area during the19th
and early 20th centuries, an area of York defined
by B. Seebohm Rowntree in his 1901 book "Poverty:
A Study of Town Life" as being in the poorest
section of the city.
 One
of the most evocative discoveries has been that of
a communal toilet that served part of the Hungate
community up until the 1930s.
The toilet was located to the east of Lower Dundas
Street, which no longer exists, within Dundas Court.
YAT archaeologists of have discovered from records
held in York City Archives that in 1907 this communal
toilet served the five houses in Dundas Court and
a further six houses that fronted on to Lower Dundas
Street. Unbelievably this would have meant that eleven
households shared this toilet block, which housed
only five closets. Kurt Hunter-Mann, Field Officer
in charge of this aspect of the excavations, described
the uncovering of the communal toilet as "a unique
insight into the living conditions of the urban poor,
which persisted to within living memory".
 Full
excavation of the communal toilet block revealed that
this toilet was a Duckett's tipper flush toilet, initially
manufactured in Burnley before being brought to York
and assembled in Dundas Court. The Duckett toilet
appears to have replaced an earlier communal toilet,
which was probably a dry pit toilet, which would have
been only occasionally cleaned out.
The mechanics of the toilet would have meant that
solid effluent would have collected in the bottom
of each of the closet pipes, with rain water and dirty
water accumulating in each of the tipper cisterns
until the accumulation of the water was sufficient
to turn over the tipper, discharging the water to
wash away the solid effluent. The tipper flush cisterns
were not plumbed into to any water source so without
rain and the concerted effort to tip used water into
them they would not have flushed.
 Although
the tipper flush toilet is an obvious indication of
the investment in the sanitation and wellbeing of
the tenants of these houses by the landlord, and was
undoubtedly more sanitary than the non-drained former
dry pit toilet, a book on sanitary engineering published
in 1920 describes this style of tipper flush toilet
or "Slop-water Closet" of being of a type
that "should never be tolerated" and furthermore
as "a direct violation of every principle of
sanitary construction". Through further scientific
analysis archaeologists at YAT hope to be able to
reveal the unsanitary conditions that would have greeted
each person as they used these toilets, conditions
almost unimaginable in Britain in the 21st century.
This toilet would have undoubtedly helped spread
disease and illness throughout this part of the Hungate
area but it would also have been instrumental in spreading
something a lot less tangible; rumour, gossip and
tales. One can imagine that such a small toilet block
with upwards of 50 people using it every day would
create many a chance encounter where scurrilous rumours,
tall tales and colourful stories were exchanged, and
it would be no surprise if some of these stories were
as filthy as the toilets themselves.
Recent Press Releases:
A
Flush With the Past (pdf file)
Background
on the Hungate Scheme
Overview
of the Hungate Scheme
Medieval
Hungate
Site
Update February 2007
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