Having read my story about John and Florence Sterry, Elaine Maloney was prompted to write to me about her recollections of the cemetery conveniences. Elaine grew up in Clifton Street and writes of her childhood memories, extracts of which I share here with you.
I remember the gent’s urinal very well. I used to live in nearby Clifton Street, just across from the pub. My Mum, Joan Maloney, used to run the Clifton Street Playgroup in the Methodist Church Hall opposite the Post Office and next to the Clifton Street entrance to the cemetery. I was often hanging about in that area waiting for my Mum to lock the Playgroup hall up and come home. During these times my Clifton Street pals and I would often climb up the quite steep path to the chapel and we would dare each other to quickly dash in and out of the urinals. Hardly surprising I suppose but the urinal always smelled strongly of stale urine, which added to the fun of the dare.
With your back to the chapel and facing the urinal straight ahead you entered from an opening in the bottom right area and went down a couple of broad steps in keeping will the slope it was built into. At the bottom of the steps you turned left into the one room toilet. A long trough was situated on the southern wall and ran all along that wall only stopping at the edge the steps began at so from your starting point you would have turned 180 degrees to use the urinal so would now be facing south or thereabouts. It wasn’t very interesting architecture just utility concrete probably covering brick. At the bottom of the walls there was moss or lichen growing up the wall. If I remember correctly I believe the floor was tiled but with quite a few of them broken. Also I believe the roof was like corrugated iron but with possibly a layer of what looked like a layer of asbestos on top of the iron.
From outside the urinal at times you could have blinked and missed it as it was often overgrown with some kind of vegetation which would cover the whole roof and hang down the side walls. Just before it was due to be trimmed back it always covered the whole building so from other areas of the cemetery you could easily miss it and I can never recall any signs about the cemetery announcing it was even there.
Of course there were also a gents and a ladies toilet located to the left of the Radnor Street entrance if you were heading out of the gates there. I cannot remember inspecting the gents but you could cram maybe six people into the ladies. It contained one of those sanitary towel burners where you would pull the handle and a wedge shaped box section, hinged at the bottom, would come into view revealing a hollow section where you could place what needed burning, supposed to be sanitary towels ONLY and when you closed this part again you could hear the furnace flash up and whatever you had placed inside would be turned to ash.
Nobody could tell you were in there and if you ran down the path back onto the pavement quickly enough you lessened the chances of a parent driving by and seeing you come out. I can never remember anybody asking us to vacate the toilet for them to use so when we decided to spend time in there we were pretty much left alone.
It’s a shame but as I take an interest in public toilets when browsing online as often they have been built in a multitude of styles depending on the era they were commissioned and I find them fascinating. Many toilet blocks were sold off and later transformed into magical looking homes. I even saw some right on a seafront which an enterprising couple turned into a neat little home with the best views you could ever hope for.
I noticed a while back after looking through some old Victorian maps of Swindon that we used to have lots of urinals dotted around Swindon with them marked clearly on the corner of every third or fourth street. This must have been fantastic for the men as they were well catered for. I have noticed though that this is far from the case for women who had to trek much further to find a lavatory suitable for them to use, which seemed to be few and far between.
Today I have found the situation is no better in fact it is several times worse and even if you can find a public toilet marked on a map you would be extremely lucky to find it is still open and serviceable which is a crying shame as once you begin to age you may find you have need of them more often than previously yet you will find yourself disappointed and will be unlikely to find any toilets today.
From Swindonian Elaine Maloney
Cemetery map with the site of the urnials
Radnor Street Cemetery 