The Knackers' yard
For years there used to be a Knackers' yard in the next village, it being within our parish, where all dead and rotting carcases were taken for disposal or collected by their open topped wooden sided cattle wagon with its hand cranked winch. The aroma of the rendering and grinding of bones wafted down wind for miles, and as the village expanded bringing in new families they all banded together and eventually got it closed down.
It all started in a small way in a tin shed where skins were salted down and meat and bone ground and cooked and rendered into fertilizer, as motorized transport came in carcase's were collected from a wider area, then bones and skins collected from slaughter houses and butchers shops. As the expansion went on so the aroma increased and with a following wind it started to be smelt in the county town just over a mile away.
In the 1940's as tractors took over the shire horses started to became redundant and of coarse many were sent for slaughter. Every week they could be seen travelling with their heads way above the top of the wagon standing with their heads over the cab wind blowing their mane. The younger ones were not slaughtered but turned out into an adjacent field, where some of the fortunate ones would find a new home.
Originally carcases were collected by horse and specially adapted cart, and then turned to motor transport. This had open topped high wooden sides and tail boards. It had a pulley at the front of the box above the cab, the winch cable running down to a hand winch, it had two handles one for each side of the wagon for two men to wind heavy carcases into the body of the vehicle. Not a lot of regulations back then, not even ear tags.
Around this time they started to clear hides bones and offal from butches shops and small slaughter houses, this was done with a small two ton wagon with low side boards, (the equivalent now to the typical builders truck).
It always seemed be driven at speed when ever it was out through the villages and heading back to base over loaded with hides, heads, and other offal that had been stored for weeks (it seemed) before being picked up, it always left a trail of smelly juice dripping or running out of the back of the vehicle body. On occasions the odd maggoty sheep's head or bones could be found on the side of the road having slipped of on the corners.
Latterly they erected a tower silo to hold the meat and bone meal fertilizer that they had produced for bulk collection by fertilizer companies, up to then it had all been always been bagged and stored to await collection.
However, the progress of house building and new folk coming into the village, the expansion of the factory way beyond its original size, even though they had tried to contain the smells by enclosing the manufacturing equipment emitted even more pungent smells and eventually forced to close.
The past is the only dead thing that smells sweet.
Edward Thomson, Poems (1917) "Early one morning"