Tag: History

Data Mining: Our Past Shaping The Industry Of The Future

On By pauljbenthamIn Something to Say...Leave a comment

I only have a few memories of my great-grandfather, Horace Barker.  He was one of only three people I met whom I know to have been born in the 19th Century and he died a few weeks before my 5th birthday so we didn’t have a lot of time to get to know each other.  

There are only a few facts about him I can recall: he was a kindly old man in his late seventies, married to my great-grandmother, Hilda. They lived in a bungalow with an immaculate garden and a greenhouse full of the sweetest tomatoes you’ve ever smelled.  Unfortunately, my own insight ends there and I have to rely on other data sources to complete my picture of him.

If you know where to look, you can find out more about him.  Various census sheets and official documents confirm that Horace was born in Pemberton, Wigan on 29th October 1897, he was a coal-miner, man and boy. He married Hilda in 1921 and together, they had a daughter, Marjorie, on 21st March 1924. He went to seek his fortune in Canada for a few months in 1929 but while he was there, Wall Street crashed – which may have influenced his decision to return home. At the outbreak of war in September 1939, Horace was recorded in the National Register as living at ‘Marus Bridge Shop’ and working as a “Colliery…Chargehand” (under-supervisor) and also a first-aider and an Air Raid Patrol warden. His wife Hilda was listed as a ‘Grocer and Confectioner’.

He was hardened by his experiences at the unforgiving coalface and later, as Colliery Manager, he bore the responsibility of the lives of the men who worked under him.  The daily obligation to make life-or-death decisions undoubtedly shaped his outlook – and it’s no surprise to reflect that coal-mining was a formative part of some of the most revered working-class heroes of his generation; men like Matt Busby and Bill Shankly.

It’s not a fatuous comparison. Pop’ (as he was known in later life) once told his grandson – my Dad – during a callow attempt to make ambitious structural changes to a farm building “tha’ll ne’er do it” [You’ll never do it], knowing well that saying so would provide the extra determination to succeed.  It worked. Like Shankly and Busby, he was what footballers would call a ‘psychologist’: adept at understanding and motivating others with a mixture of high standards and a gruff, uncompromising demeanour. By all accounts, he was a formidable character – and it’s easy to see why he needed to be.  

Today, more than half a lifetime after his death, the world is a vastly different place.  Fossil fuels – and their effects – are (literally) unsustainable and we’ve made great strides to power out future by harnessing the natural resources around us.  That which we used to have to mine out of the ground to add value to our lives is necessarily diminishing in long-term value.  And yet, over the same five decades, humanity has also created something in such a vast quantity that it now forms the most valuable mined resource than anything based in carbon.

Since 2017, it’s become widely accepted that data has become the world’s most valuable commodity, overtaking that long-standing former favourite, oil.  The world’s most valuable companies now trade in quadrillions of bits, rather than billions of barrels.  Carbon is just so finite, so boringly elusive, so…analogue.  Data is different: it’s so dynamic, so ubiquitous, so…sustainable. And, just as with coal, the very juiciest bits of all this data, that inform decisions which can make or break fortunes, are there to be mined from the vastly more voluminous, less valuable stuff, all around it.

To do that, you need to be able to find relevant data, verify its accuracy and understand its meaning. For this you must also have a clear understanding of the problem that the data is being used to solve. You must also be aware of the statistical pitfalls of sticking different data together and making logical conclusions that clearly show that the correlations in the data unambiguously answer the questions being posed. To those who are not familiar with it, data mining may seem like a very indistinct process, maybe even a pseudoscience. But it’s simply a case of trying to create a ‘picture’ of knowledge about a group or an individual, based on available facts, cross-tabulated with other known information, to build a profile. If that still sounds unhelpfully abstract, then re-read the first five paragraphs above and you’ll see that’s exactly what I was doing there; turning documented fact into reasoned propensity.

Obviously, data-mining is not remotely dangerous; the work is not back-breaking work and there’s little chance of contracting long-term health conditions due to the working environment but it’s essentially the same principle – although I’m not sure that miners of old would see it that way. In ‘The Road To Wigan Pier’, George Orwell describes at length the awesome physicality demanded of coal miners, even comparing them to Olympic athletes. Pop once said of his own brother-in-law (whom he considered to be a less capable individual) “I’d durst let him’t strike at mi arse wi’ a pick”.  If you cut through the old Lancashire dialect and the, er, slightly industrial language, it was a scathing put-down:  ‘I’d dare to him to swing a pick-axe at my backside’ – believing him be too weak to do any harm.  

Horace “Pop” Barker’s miner’s lamp. Photo: Paul Bentham

We still have his miner’s lamp, although the reason for its presentation (long-service, retirement or just his actual working lamp, polished up) is now lost in the mists of time.  There’s also a brilliantly evocative picture of him, arms folded, his coal-blackened face staring defiantly into the camera, taken at the pit-head – I believe at Chisnall Hall Colliery near Coppull.  He died in 1978, before the final decline of the industry that sustained his whole life.  

I often wonder what he would have made of the miners’ strike of the 1980s, of Arthur Scargill’s leadership of the National Union of Mineworkers, of Health & Safety law, of the demise of ‘Old King Coal’ and even of the shift to renewable energy. 

More than anything, I’d love to explain to him the parallels between his industry and mine: the intricacies of data, profiling and algorithms. With the arrogance of (relative) youth, I might expect the ‘wonders’ of the digital age to blow his Victorian mind. I’d tell him how confidently I could pinpoint the addresses of all the greenhouse-owning pensioners in Standish, based on a few data sources and the internet. I’d like to think he’d tell me I’d “ne’er do it”.

But then I shouldn’t be surprised if it left him largely unimpressed – a lot of statistical inference could easily be termed ‘common sense’. If you’ve had any experience of retail, as he did, you soon develop a sense of what ‘type’ each customer is, based on their buying history and their responses to different stimuli. Grocers in 1939 didn’t need a suite of linked tables to understand which customers would be best suited to which products; their database was in their heads. Computers have merely added the capability to make the same predictions on a far greater scale and with ever-increasing complexity.

Nor would he necessarily be a stranger to the more contemporary concerns of wholesale data collation. As a coal miner in Wigan in the 1930s, he is likely to have been well aware of the famous Orwell book about his hometown. If he were to have discussed Orwell’s most famous novel, ‘Nineteen Eighty-Four’, just over a decade later, he would have become well-acquainted with that age’s most prescient description of data use and misuse – and a delicious historical irony would have followed. I remember the death of the aforementioned ‘pick axe’ brother-in-law in December 1983. At his memorial service, in the days after Christmas, the sermon made reference to the incoming new year (1984) and the parallels in the book of the same name that we should consider. Two or three weeks before Apple Computers famously did it, a vicar in Wigan was riffing on the warnings of the coming year.

There’ll always be a limit to what I can know about Horace Barker, and what I can reliably surmise, There are many closed-off avenues that, tantalisingly, could be re-opened with the provision of just a little more data. That’s the frustration of genealogy – the suspicion that one small discovery may set off a chain reaction of greater understanding. Exactly the same can be said of data mining – which makes the quest for the knowledge it can provide all the more enticing.

Horace ‘Pop’ Barker at the pit-head

When Ancestors Go Bad

On By pauljbenthamIn Something to Say...Leave a comment

If you’ve ever watched the BBC’s Who Do You Think You Are?, you’ll know that sooner or later, the path of genealogy will lead to an ancestor with a less than edifying bit of family history.

And so it was the case when my cousin and fellow genealogy enthusiast came across the story of the events at (our great-great-great grandfather) Henry Bentham’s yard in 1875. This story appeared in the The Wigan Observer and District Advertiser in July 1875. It concerns the inquest in Standish, relating to death of a 14 year-old boy, Charles Renshaw.

DEATH FROM A BLOW WITH A BRUSH AT STANDISH

Mr. Gilbertson, district county coroner, held an inquest at the Wheat Sheaf Inn, Standish, yesterday evening, on the body of Charles Renshaw, who died on Thursday morning from the effects of injuries inflicted the previous Tuesday by a man of the name of Thomas Healey. Mr. Super Intendant Beetham, Chorley, was present. Healey was present in custody.

Ann Bentham, wife of Henry Bentham, grocer, Standish, said the deceased lived with her as a servant for the last two years. He was about 14 years of age; and had told her that his father was a hairdresser and was in Australia, and that his mother, who was addicted to drinking, was in Liverpool. On Tuesday last he went out about half-past seven in the evening, and was brought home about half-past nine o’clock; but she did not see him till the following morning. He was then insensible, and he grew worse and died Thursday morning.

Seth Ollerton, Standish, son of John Ollerton, collier, Standish said he knew the deceased. He was with him near the Wheat Sheaf when the omnibus came up, about half past eight o’clock on Tuesday evening. They afterwards went into the yard, and witness and deceased and some other boys began to unfasten the horses. Wm. Bentham, or as he was called ‘Billy Dog’, who was the driver, got hold of the deceased and put him down on the ground, and rubbed his head with some straw. 

The prisoner, Thos. Healey, was present, and got hold of the driver’s whip and laid on deceased with it, after telling him he had no business in the yard. Deceased refused to go out, and picked up half a brick and threw it at the prisoner, striking him on the back of the hand. Bentham, the driver, came up and took the whip from prisoner, who seized a brush that was standing at the stable door and going up to where the deceased was, struck him on the back of the head with it.

Witness was close by at the time, and could see that the deceased had another piece of brick in his hand, ready to throw at the prisoner. Deceased fell on the ground after receiving the blow with the brush, and blood came from his nose. A woman who lived in the street opposite, came and lifted the deceased up. 

James Grounds and Edward Pennington were present in the yard at the time:

“We were driven twice out of the yard by you and we came in a third time, and were told by you that it was time we were at home and in bed. We went outside the gate way and deceased cursed the prisoner, and said he would not go away for him.

“Prisoner then took up the brush and said he would make him go, and struck deceased with it. All of the boys ran away but the deceased. The deceased told me that he had had a pint of whiskey that day.” – The Coroner: “I cannot put that down.” – The Sergeant of Police: “Mrs. Bentham can prove he had had no drink.”

James Grounds (13), son of James Grounds, shop keeper, Shevington, said he lived with the deceased at Bentham’s. He was with him on Tuesday night, and waited about at Chadwick’s till the omnibus from Wigan came, about 23 minutes after eight o’clock. They followed it into the Wheat Sheaf yard, and deceased began to act as if he were drunk. “‘Billy Dog’ rubbed deceased’s face with straw, and prisoner seized a whip and struck him with it. Deceased thereupon seized a stone or brick and threw it at him, and the driver took the whip from prisoner, saying he could lay on with the brush.” 

Prisoner accordingly went to the stable door and got the brush, and the deceased meanwhile picked up half a brick. Witness went into the stable, and when he came out deceased was lying on the ground, near the gateway, bleeding from the nose and mouth. Prisoner said he had dazed deceased. – By the prisoner: “There were ten boys in the yard. Deceased told me he had had a sup of drink, but he did not seem to be the worse for it, as he ran a race with me a short time before this.”

Mary Sutton, wife of Robert Sutton, Standish, labourer, said she lived opposite the gateway leading to the stable yard of the Wheat Sheaf. She saw the prisoner whip the boys out of the yard at about nine o’clock on Tuesday night, and amongst others the deceased, who stood at the gateway, while the others ran away. “Prisoner whipped the deceased twice, and after the latter had thrown at stone, which hit the prisoner on the hand, he went towards the stable and returned with the brush and struck the deceased in the back of the head. The deceased fell down, and witness ran across the road and saw he was bleeding from the nose and mouth. He did not speak; and he was carried away.”

John L. Price, surgeon, Standish, said he was sent for to attend the deceased shortly after nine on Tuesday night. On arriving at the Wheat Sheaf yard he found the deceased, who was insensible, supported by two men. A plank was procured and the boy laid upon it, his head being raised by some straw. He was bleeding from the nose and mouth, and he seemed in a dangerous state. There was some ashes about his face, and on washing away the dirt he found a swelling behind the left ear. 

Finding that the boy did not rally he got four men to carry him to his own home. He last saw him at nine o’clock the night previous to his death. The deceased never regained consciousness. He had made a post-mortem examination of the deceased’s body, and found a fracture of the skull at the point behind the ear where the bones meet. Death resulted from compression of the brain caused by the fracture of the skull, and might have been caused by a blow.

The Coroner summed up the evidence, and recommended a verdict of manslaughter, but the jury returned a verdict of accidental death.

Henry Bentham doesn’t come out of this story particularly well, as the owner/operator of the Omnibus – his 1871 census entry under ‘Occupation’ was ‘Grocer and Omnibus Proprietor’. His wife Ann (née Grounds) seems to have been more connected with the grocery mentioned in the census. Her brother James was also grocer, in Shevington and it is his son James (Ann’s nephew) who is the 13 year-old lodger mentioned in the story.

Henry and Ann’s eldest son, William sounds like a particularly undesirable person. Aside from cultivating the nickname ‘Billy Dog’, it is he who, at best, fails stop stop Healey from attacking the boy – and may even have encouraged that kind of behaviour. These event take place two years before the publication of Black Beauty, a story of common Victorian attitudes to animal welfare. One can only imagine if ‘Billy Dog’ was the kind of horse owner that compelled Anna Sewell to comment on the horse cruelty of the day.

Henry and Anne’s second son and William’s younger brother was James Bentham, my great-great grandfather. You can read about his exploits as he travelled across the United States, 37 years later. Their youngest brother, George had his own tale to tell of travels in North America, which I’m still researching.

Rather depressingly, this incident paints a picture of the cheapness of life and the inevitability of casual violence against children in the 1870s. Incredibly, the jury delivered a verdict of accidental death and weren’t invited to consider any charge greater than manslaughter. It’s worth considering that the facts established in this case might today support a charge of murder. Almost forty years after the publication of Oliver Twist, many of the themes that Dickens explores in that novel still seem to exist in Standish. ‘Billy Dog’ seems similar in nature to ‘Bill Sikes’, the story’s main antagonist – even though the accused in this case is his sidekick Thomas Healy. Charles Renshaw, while not an orphan, is said to have been abandoned by an absent father and a feckless mother. As with ‘Nancy’, he meets a brutal end at the hands of an abusive man.

A Manchester Carriage Company horse bus in Eccles town centre, c.1870. Photo: The Museum of Transport, Greater Manchester

From White Hall to White House

On By pauljbenthamIn Something to Say...Leave a comment

A story of my great-great grandfather: a man from Standish who visited the residence of the President, dined at the US Capitol and didn’t quite become a wine mogul in California…

Lots of us have discovered the joys and frustrations of researching our family history online. I’ve created a Family Tree on Ancestry.com and posted before about some of the exploits of my ancestors that I’ve been able to uncover.

The process is very similar to physical archaeology or, I imagine, gold-mining. It involves long periods of frustration punctuated by short instances of blinding discovery, the thrill of which is enough to sustain the addiction to persevere through the next, inevitable long period of frustration.

This time, it was my cousin, Adam, who found the nugget of gold while out prospecting. He was following up on a totally different part of the family story when he came across this story in the 25th January 1913 edition of the ‘Wigan Observer’ – exactly 110 years old.

It appears our great-great grandfather, James Bentham, former cattle dealer and farmer had, in December 1912, been part of a delegation of wine investors to inspect a vineyard in Wahtoke, just outside Fresno, California. If you Google ‘Wahtoke’, you find the settlement is now abandoned but but was established enough to have a US Post Office between 1905 and 1916.

What’s most interesting about the letter is his description of arriving in Washington DC, en route, and managed to find themselves being received at the White House “where the President [William Howard Taft] and Cabinet were sitting in one portion of the building”. They subsequently visited other Governmental buildings, including the Capitol, where they witnessed an impeachment hearing and were then invited to dine.

The letter includes a number of interesting details of the trip from Liverpool to Wahtoke, via New York, Washington, New Orleans, El Paso and Los Angeles, including something of a fixation with the quality of paving. Remember also that they made that Liverpool to New York crossing, in “exceptionally rough” seas, only eight months after the loss of the Titanic.

Here is the letter, transcribed in full, by Adam and copied and pasted, by me:

From The Wigan Observer and District Advertiser, Saturday 25th January 1913.

A Wigan Gentleman in California

Mr Samuel Taylor, J.P. the Chairman of Directors of Anglo-California Vineyards Ltd. has received the following letter from Mr. James Bentham (of Wigan and Blackpool) who is now on a visit to California.

Alameda Vineyard,
Wahtoke, California
December 26th 1912

Dear Mr. Taylor

I left Liverpool on the 30th November with my friend, Mr. Crompton of Preston, for the purpose of personally inspecting this vineyard, which was recently acquired by friends, principally in Wigan, Southport and Blackpool districts, and floated as the Anglo-Californian Vineyards Ltd. about which I shall have more to say later on. 

The sea journey was exceptionally rough, even for this time of the year, as we had to face north-western gales and high seas for about seven days, and we landed in New York on the 9th day. We found this city with 16 degrees of frost, and were not long in making up our minds to go out west. Our impression of New York, with its badly paved streets and network of tram and railway lines, was not good enough to induce us to spend much time there. 

We, therefore, made our way in the afternoon to Washington. The whole of the land between these cities, so far as could be seen from the train, was nothing but swamp and barren land. We were delighted with Washington, the streets being very wide and well laid out. The public buildings are also of a very high order, and we were privileged to enter the ‘White House’ where the President and Cabinet were sitting in one portion of the building.

We visited the Treasury, Army and Navy, and other public buildings (inside) including the Capitol, where we had the pleasure of listening to a debate of the Senators (who were trying to unseat the member for Philadelphia for corruption at his election) after which we had the privilege of dining in the building.

In the evening we left for New Orleans, passing through Mobile, which is the great shipping port for timber in the Gulf of Mexico. On arrival at New Orleans we were introduced to several members of the Cotton Exchange, who were kind enough to make us members for 10 days, thus enabling us to be present at the sales when the important announcement of the total cotton crop was made. It is impossible to describe the excitement that took place for about half an hour. The city is wretchedly paved outside the principal streets, but the buildings are fine.

We left at midnight, the whole train passing over the Mississippi River by ferry in three sections, and in the morning we were in Texas, which grows more than one fourth of the cotton in America. We were two days and nights passing through this large state, which is called a ‘dry State’ which means that you cannot even get a bottle of lager to dinner. 

We picked up a lot of soldiers who were going out to quell the rebellion in Mexico, and put them off there at a place called El Paso. Finally, we reached Los Angeles, where we might have spent a day or two in a beautiful city, but we were anxious to get to our destination, and went on to Fresno, where we had to remain two days before coming here.

And now I must say something of Alameda. After a week’s stay and general inspection we have come to the conclusion that there is no better cultivated land or better kept vineyard in California; the houses and buildings are quite equal to the land.

I see from the papers (one of which I am sending you) that the value of land is going up greatly in this district.

I am, yours faithfully,

James Bentham.

I’ve learned that it’s dangerous to take anything like this at face value so there are some layers of verification to apply before we take for granted that this story is as it appears.

First, James and his wife Alice lived in Standish for many years, first on High Street, then at While Hall on Cross Street (approximately where Standish Library now stands) and then at Broomfield House on Bradley Lane, where both my Dad (Jim) and Adam’s mum (Anne) grew up. In the 1911 census, James and Alice are shown as living at ’42 Chesterfield Road, Blackpool’. The specific reference of “Mr. James Bentham (of Wigan and Blackpool)” leaves far less possibility that it applies to another James Bentham.

Having moved out of the family farm and (as we’d say today) ‘downsized’, it’s also more likely that he would have the capital to both invest and travel. I’ve often wondered why he and Alice moved to Blackpool. Alice died in December 1913, aged 66, so my theory always was that they moved to “take the [sea] air”, as was common for people living with poor health in those days. There’s no reference to Alice accompanying him on this journey. She may have been unwilling, unwell or simply uninvited.

What happened next? Was James one of the team of investors? What happened to the Alameda Vineyard? Aside from family rumours about of swindling, I can’t say if, or by how much, James was financially involved. Prohibition in 1919 would not have helped the business plan but the loss of the Post Office, during wartime, in 1916, suggests that the town’s fortunes may have receded even before that.

I can say my grandad was born, six weeks after the publication of this letter, on 6th April 1913, although I’m not sure if James, his grandfather, was back in England by then. Two days after Christmas that year, James’ wife, Alice, died and only six months after that, Archduke Ferdinand was assassinated in Sarajevo, leading to the outbreak of the First World War, within weeks. As we now know all too well, James seemed to have been in the process of making plans in a world that was about to change out of all recognition. He lived on until the age of 81 and died in Blackpool in November 1930.

Anyway, here’s a picture of part of the article.

CSG: The First 85 Years

On By pauljbenthamIn Client: Cleansing Service Group

Posted on http://www.csg.co.uk/blog on November 6th 2019

https://www.csg.co.uk/blog/csg-the-first-85-years

2019 is an important year for CSG – it’s the 85th anniversary of our birth! ‘Hampshire Cleansing Service’ was founded in January 1934 by Edgar ‘Bunny’ Hart, the patriarchal figure of the family that still owns the company today. In that time, while so many aspects of daily life, business and waste processing have changed beyond recognition, the basic principles of the Cleansing – and the Service – remain very much in evidence today.

csg_lores-5337-800x426
CSG (Cleansing Service Group) celebrates its 85th birthday in 2019.  Photo: CSG

In 1933, Bunny Hart was a man in a hurry. Born in 1898, the seventh child of a successful butcher in London, he’d already crammed a lot into his first thirty-five years. He’d served in The Great War from 1917, become an expert skier in Kitzbühel, graduated as an engineer in 1923, taken a job in Chile in 1924 and, when the post became untenable, worked his passage as he toured around North and South America for the next two years. Upon his return to Britain, he started work for a tanker manufacturer in Southampton and began to court the woman he would eventually marry.

Despite the respectable job and steady relationship, his independent spirit hadn’t waned – he wanted to control his own destiny. The contacts he’d generated around Hampshire had convinced him that there was was a business opportunity for emptying the contents of the products he’d previously sold. Collecting sewage could never be described as attractive work but he would almost certainly have been encouraged by the old adage “where there’s muck there’s brass”. The growing levels of regulatory reform, even then, were an encouraging sign that unprofessional competition would be prohibited and it meant that, if Bunny could earn a carrier’s licence, he was sure he could build a healthy business.

Evidently, Bunny’s acumen and professionalism were impressive enough to convince the licensing body to award him a licence towards the end of 1933, sufficient for his needs. Now, all he needed was a vehicle. On 2nd December, he managed to procure a second-hand, solid-tyred 800-gallon Dennis tanker from Wokingham Rural District Council for the princely sum of £5. It’s difficult to imagine a real-terms value of such a figure without knowing the effects of over eight decades of inflation so you may be surprised to learn that £5 then was the equivalent of just £250 today. Compared to the 25 guineas (the equivalent of £1,330 today) to buy the latest ‘2 in 1’ gramophone and radio set from His Master’s Voice, Bunny’s £5 tanker still seems like a real bargain.

Of course, it wasn’t quite as cheap as it sounds – the ancient tanker needed to be updated and that’s where the real costs were. Renewing the old hose cost £47 7s (£2,400 in today’s money) and replacing the impractical solid tyres with a modern, practical pneumatic set cost a rather eye- watering £104 18s 4d (£5,300). Finally, sign-writing costs were £4 2s 6d (£209), a canny bit of marketing spend to publicly announce the new company everywhere the tanker went. The legend of the ‘£5 tanker’ sounds romantic but in reality, it represented what might today be considered an initial investment of over £8,000. Not a lot to start a business, perhaps, but quite a lot of money to stake on a firm belief of success.

On January 1st 1934, with his Dennis tanker upgraded and his ‘B’ licence effective, Bunny was ready to take on the waste disposal industry. It has to be said that 1934 wasn’t the most encouraging time to start a business. The Wall Street Crash was only a few years before and Britain had endured three years of economic decline as a result of the Great Depression. Then, just as the economy was recovering, tensions began to rise again in Europe as a resurgent Germany fell under the spell of Adolf Hitler, barely fifteen years after the Armistice was supposed to have put an end to the threat of more war. Perhaps this all seemed a world away from rural Hampshire as Bunny pursued his ambitions. Whether or not such concerns formed part of his thinking, they would not stop him trying.

He knew that, as they said about the Gold Rush, a century earlier, there was money in them there cesspits – but unlike 1840s California, the ‘gold’ was being constantly replenished. And so it proved. As the 1930s went on and the world moved inexorably towards another war, Hampshire Cleansing Service had indeed begun to grow as Bunny had intended. At the outbreak of war in 1939, six vehicles were operating around the county.

It couldn’t be denied that the war footing was good for business. With so many army bases, airfields and camps becoming established in the area, a huge increase in demand for sewage collection was, literally, a natural consequence. By the end of the war, the company employed a hundred people, the fleet had risen to thirty-five vehicles, and coverage had extended to three counties.

Unsurprisingly, the post-war years saw the military sewage collections dwindle but crucially, the company had become capable enough to replace that revenue with work from schools, factories and holiday camps. The fleet extended to a range of different vehicles, capable of extracting and dispensing the matter in different ways but the same basic principles of ‘Cleansing’ remained – and wherever people were gathered, the potential for another sewage collection existed. It may seem to have been a rather rudimentary business model but it’s easy to overlook another vital element – ‘Service’.

It’s unlikely to have been by accident that Bunny ensured that the word ‘Service’ remained in every iteration of his company’s name. His years as a salesman will have convinced him that sales do not just happen mechanically; they are agreed to by people, placing their faith in the quality of a job done well, assured that the experience will offer the reward of diligence and integrity beyond the basic process. Particularly in the case of domestic customers in remote areas, with their cesspits, the regular, reassuring sight of a friendly driver has defined their relationship with our company, retaining their trust and their custom over many years.

Throughout the 1950s and 60s, the company continued to seek out further opportunities to grow but by the beginning of the 1970s, Bunny had become gravely ill. When he died in 1971, he left a hugely successful legacy – a company that had begun to develop its capabilities and diversify into other areas of waste disposal. For some time, it had became necessary to add ever more specialist knowledge in order to operate in each specific sector of the wider waste industry.

In the years that followed, a wave of new regulations on employee health & safety, pollution, the deposit of poisonous waste and many more must have seemed frustratingly restrictive, compared to the ‘good old days’ of simply dispersing sewage into the field of a friendly farmer – but it was a benefit in disguise. Just as Bunny had benefitted from the the protection from unprofessional competitors that his licence gave him in 1934, the industry was challenging its most competent exponents to expand at the expense of those who could not adapt to the tighter regulations. Few companies were better placed to meet these challenges than the newly-assembled ‘Cleansing Services Group’.

Over the last five decades, the market has continued to sub-divide into more distinct specialisms, regulations have continued to strengthen, CSG has continued to add greater capability to the group and performance has continued to grow. Were he alive today, Bunny Hart may be amazed at the depth of knowledge now required in order to operate in so many sectors, the level of expertise in chemistry, logistics, environmental law, employee training – let alone the disciplines required to support it all, such as funding schemes, HR policy, social media management and many, many more. Given his fore-sightedness, perhaps he might not.

In 85 years, CSG has undergone a metamorphosis from a small, local provider of a specific service to a huge, diverse amalgamation of a wide variety of specialisms, all loosely connected with the world of consumption and waste. In a quirk of fate, one of the most innovative areas of our operations today is the same, necessary removal and treatment of sewage. Now, as it ever was, there’s still ‘brass’ wherever there’s ‘muck’.

In 1934, a very different Britain was still shaped by her Victorian heyday, in the twilight of Empire. The country mourned the passing of two of its greatest composers, Elgar and Holst, a 19 year-old called Stanley Matthews made his England debut and a writer from Australia called PL Travers published a book called ‘Mary Poppins’. It was, in so many ways, nothing like the Britain we inhabit today. And yet, the basic rules of business apply today, as much as they did then – the vital importance of doing a job well, to the absolute satisfaction of the customer.

May those fundamental guiding principles continue to guide CSG over the many decades to come! 

CSG: From One Revolution to the Next – A History of our Cadishead Site

On By pauljbenthamIn Client: Cleansing Service Group

Posted on www.csg.co.uk/blog on January 17th 2018

https://www.csg.co.uk/blog/one-revolution-next-history-csg-cadishead

Our recent blogpost about CSG’s heritage showed the importance of history to this company. Developing the idea, we thought it might be interesting to take a closer look at one of our sites, our processing facility in Cadishead, near Manchester.

Like many towns in the swathe of territory between Manchester and Liverpool, Cadishead became thrust into the heart of the Industrial Revolution by the construction of the Liverpool & Manchester Railway from 1826. In fact, Chat Moss, an area of marshland just north of our site became notable for the challenge it provided to the railway’s engineers, led by the renowned George Stephenson. Four years later, on September 15th 1830, the new line, a marvel of the Victorian age, opened to wide acclaim – with Robert Stephenson’s famous Rocket among the first locomotives to run on the line.

Cadishead’s significance was further assured in the late 1880s, with the construction of the Manchester Ship Canal. On the day it opened, January 1st 1894, it was the largest canal of its type in the world and would enable Manchester, a city located some 40 miles inland to become Britain’s third-busiest port. With such strong transport links, this previously agricultural area had, within a couple of generations, become one of the most strategically important locations in the country.

If you’ve ever used the stretch of the M62 between its junctions with the M6 at Birchwood and the M60 at Eccles, you may have noticed just how uneven the road can be – and how often it seems to be re-surfaced. Local wisdom suggests that the ground beneath is so criss-crossed with mine shafts and extracted coal, even after over a hundred years, the soil is still settling into place, disrupting the surface. In the early 1890s, with the advent of the Ship Canal, nearby Cadishead suddenly became a hugely important location to load millions of tonnes of coal onto waiting barges.

An early map of the canal shows a high concentration of recently-laid railway lines nearby, crossing the canal and terminating at a loading areas on both banks – the viaduct remains today, albeit unused. It also indicates that while the immediate area around our Liverpool Road site remained quite agricultural in nature, even then, a mineral line ran alongside the canal, where today’s Cadishead Way by-pass (A57) begins.

As the area began to prosper from its now enviable location, it was clear that the site around Hayes Farm was far too important to be left unexploited and a local railway historian suggests that around the turn of the 20th Century, it became the home of the Lancashire Patent Fuel Company, a manufacturer of fuel briquettes. Around the time of the First World War, the company was acquired by the Manna Oil Refinery, a name which would make newspaper headlines in 1915.

It was on the 8th October that year that a fire broke out at the refinery. With highly flammable liquids stored on site and no public fire-fighting service in the vicinity, there was grave concern that a deeper tragedy may occur. Quickly, the Works Fire Brigade of the nearby Co-operative Wholesale Society (CWS), a volunteer force of 25 men and their horse-drawn appliance. With seven police constables holding back growing crowds, they were eventually supported by the Eccles Fire Brigade with their more modern, motorised, fire engine.

Thankfully, no lives were lost although three of the men who fought the fire were severely burned. The damage to the site resulted in a £3,500 insurance claim (£370,000 at today’s value) and the resulting inquest decided that the Eccles Fire Brigade should take responsibility for Irlam and Cadishead. It would be another eight years until Irlam was afforded its own Fire Brigade and Engine.

In 1916, British Tar Products opened a site at the end of Hayes Road, making explosives for the war effort, gaining a capability that extended beyond the war with the production of other oil-based products. Tar became an even more important part of the local economy when, a few years later, the Lancashire Tar Distillers opened a plant in the shadow of the Cadishead Viaduct.

In1932, the then Duke of York – later to become King George VI – the father of Queen Elizabeth visited Irlam to be given a tour of the nearby CWS Margarine factory and Steelworks. Around the same time, this aerial photograph of Cadishead was taken – our Liverpool Road site is unfortunately just out of shot to the left of the picture.

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With the country at war once again between 1939 and 1945, the area was vital to the war effort, supplying coal, steel and household goods to power and sustain the country. The strategic importance of the Manchester Ship Canal was not lost on the Luftwaffe, who repeatedly bombed Salford Quays, famously damaging Manchester United’s Old Trafford ground in the process. With so much vital industry and infrastructure, Cadishead did not escape the bombing, with properties on Liverpool Road amongst those hit by the bombs.

By the end of the war, Cadishead was given an eerie reminder of the reason behind the hardships of the previous six years. With victory in Europe declared, the U1023, a 500-ton German U-boat, captured by the Royal Navy, embarked on a tour of the country to raise money for the King George’s Fund for Sailors. She was sailed along the Manchester Ship Canal, passing a matter of yards from our Cadishead site, to Salford Quays, where she was on display between 6th and 11th July 1945.

With the war won and, eventually, rationing over, Britain began to recover her prosperity and, by 1957, with the words of the Prime Minister, Harold MacMillan that “most of our people have never had it so good”, Irlam and Cadishead was indeed teeming with industry and opportunity. Aerial photographs of the time show a thriving steelworks in Irlam separated from the British Tar Products site in Cadishead by the Cheshire railway line approach to the Cadishead viaduct. Britain’s post-war resurgence was quite literally forged in places like this.

On the morning of Tuesday April 14th 1970, five men were killed while being ferried over the Manchester Ship Canal by “Bob’s Ferry”, a service that had existed for almost a hundred years, which operated from Bob’s Lane, adjacent to our current site. Further upstream in Partington, a Dutch vessel was being loaded with 1,800 tons of petrol and, due to the negligence of those who should have been supervising the operation, upto 14,000 gallons had overflowed into the canal. It was never known what sparked the fuel but within seconds, upto a mile of the canal became engulfed with flames upto 60 feet high. On April 30th, a sixth man died, as a result of the injuries sustained.

In the 1970s, times were changing and Cadishead seemed to be a perfect example of the transition from one era to the next. Like many heavy industries in Britain in the that decade, it was clear that decline had set in and in 1979, the Irlam Steelworks closed, resulting in redundancy and uncertainty for hundreds of local families. In the same year, a Cadishead-born graphic designer called Ray Lowry saw the release of his most famous work – the iconic cover of The Clash’s most famous album, ‘London Calling’. The demise of heavy industry coinciding with the rise of the creative economy and popular culture were apparent in many places in 1979 but in this respect, Cadishead seemed to be a microcosm of the whole country.

In 1981, the Manchester Ship Canal railway closed, leaving the British Tar company to operate its own rail connection. By the mid-1990s, the Tar production stopped and the site was cleared, eventually used for housing development a decade or so later.

Our site at Liverpool Road in Cadishead was by this point operated by Lanstar, a derivative company of the Lancashire Tar Distillers who had occupied a site in Cadishead for over 80 years and had developed an expertise in treating industrial and hazardous waste.

With the emergence of ever-tightening restrictions on waste, this was an industry in its own throes of revolution and opportunity, just like Cadishead had seen with coal, oil and then steel over the previous century. With its enviable facilities and strategic location (although now, proximity to the motorway network had become more important that the Manchester Ship Canal), it was a prime candidate for acquisition and in August 2000, Lanstar Holdings was acquired by CSG.

With such a rich history, and a key part in the Industrial Revolution, the Co-operative movement and then the subsequent decline of mining and steelworks, Cadishead and Irlam’s development has, to a large extent, become a textbook example of the very history of industry in the UK over the last two hundred years. With CSG’s focus on recycling and commitment to development to achieve better waste outcomes in future, it combines two of the most sought-after elements to meet the challenges ahead: environmental sustainability and the so-called knowledge economy.

In many ways, this part of Cadishead is as well-placed to meet the needs of the future as it was when Stephenson’s Rocket raced past, all those years ago.

CSG: Brand Pillar 2 – Heritage

On By pauljbenthamIn Client: Cleansing Service Group

Posted on www.csg.co.uk/blog on October 11th 2017

http://www.csg.co.uk/blog/brand-pillar-2-heritage/

By now, you may be familiar with CSG’s recent efforts to identify the most important elements that make us what we are – which we’ve called our brand pillars. Last week, we examined our unique approach to customer service. This time, the focus falls on another area that makes CSG so special: our heritage and no examination of CSG’s heritage would be worth reading if it didn’t feature our Chairman and the eldest daughter of our founder, Heather Hart.

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Heather Hart signing a book at this year’s CSG book launch for “The Hart of Waste A History of Cleansing Service Group”.  Photo: CSG

Edgar ‘Bunny’ Hart had started his Hampshire Cleansing Service in 1934, with the purchase of a single tanker and dreams of greater success, which he was busily pursuing several years later when the time came to start a family. Heather was thus born into a household dependent upon the success of a new business in a world shrouded by the uncertainties of war. It’s likely to have been a time which offered more than a little stress to disrupt this domestic idyll but Heather recollects little about her father’s work, back then.

“I remember knowing that my father was ‘back from the office’, when he arrived home but at that age, I didn’t question what that might mean.”

One reason for that may have been that Bunny was also an active member of the Home Guard, tasked with monitoring enemy activity, principally around Britain’s southern coastal towns. The Home Guard may now be inextricable linked with the hapless efforts of ‘Dad’s Army’ but in reality, their role was one which put them in the front line of any threat to occur on British soil.

Another reason why the two Hart daughters were shielded from the family business was the fact that their mother, Margaret was keen to keep the two spheres separate. She always insisted that they would not be forced into the business, by default. It’s something of a stereotype that family businesses are apt to carry discussions readily from the boardroom to the dining room table but if that ever happened in the Hart household, it was only when the girls were absent, a situation made more likely by their attendance at boarding school.

Heather’s first memory of visiting ‘the office’ (CSG’s original site at Botley, Hampshire) came when, aged “between 12 and 14”, she and her younger sister, Hilary rode their ponies there – literally all the way into their father’s office. When one of the ponies did what comes naturally – and what can always be expected of them at such moments – all over the office floor, Heather recalls “Bill Norton from the yard dealt with it”. As unfortunate as the incident was, at least you might conclude that it was the best possible place to have such a waste removal requirement!

By her mid-teens, Heather had become more aware of the nature and culture of her family’s business. At 15, something happened that was to push her further into the world her father had created:

“One of my father’s employees, Rosemary Rogers (always known as “Ro”) decided to marry Bill Voller, one of the drivers. Unfortunately, her parents disapproved of the marriage and let it be known that they would not be attending the wedding. My father offered to attend in support of Rosemary and, as my mother was ill at the time, I was to accompany him.”

Not only did this more closely acquaint Heather with the business, it was also clear that those who worked there were regarded by Bunny as a kind of extended family. It was a formative experience.

Despite her mother’s concerns, Heather later sought to develop her interest in CSG – to Bunny’s great delight – and began to work in the office a few days a week “learning bits and pieces, shadowing Father and reading lots of Directors’ correspondence”. As her compulsion to join the business had been entirely self-generated, her mother was placated. Heather’s involvement therefore seemed to suit everyone.

Within a few years, Heather had become elevated to the Board, already widely experienced and yet, in her own words, “not knowing I was learning – but then I’ve always underestimated my own knowledge”. Around this time, Bunny’s health was beginning to falter but still, Heather had no expectations to succeed him – “it wasn’t in anyone’s mind, certainly not mine. I was in control of the cash book at that time as we did not have an accountant in those days”.

Upon Bunny’s death in 1971, Heather became thrust towards a leadership role, a mere seven years after her first day in work. Heather refers to her status over the next years as a “gap filler”, diverting her attention variously to Human Resources, Sales and gaining British Standards accreditations. As modest as this description sounds, her approach of adding or enhancing systems to produce continuous performance improvements in different areas sound more like the actions of a trouble-shooter, adding value to the business and maintaining the family interest.

Within months, she and CSG would find themselves at the centre of an emergency making national headlines that many observers, Heather included, believed would shape the very future of the whole waste industry.

It was February 1972 and police were called to a site near a children’s playground in Nuneaton to find 36 drums of highly toxic sodium cyanide ash dumped on open ground. The incident made front-page news and resulted in an emergency debate in the House of Commons the next day. Sweetways, a CSG subsidiary had been engaged by the authorities to move the material to our Botley site, where it was safely treated.

MPs were calling for reform of an industry that had failed to prevent an incident that could potentially have resulted in a major tragedy but many in the industry seemed resistant, aware that stronger regulation threatened to disrupt their livelihoods. CSG had to decide if it was better to position itself as a more responsible operator, with the expectation that tougher legislation would gain more business in the longer term, or add its voice to those keen to maintain the status quo. Unanimously, the Board chose the former option, embracing the brave new world of regulation and greater professionalism.

From today’s perspective, it seems as if it was an obvious choice but ours is a perspective shaped, in part, by that decision. It must have taken a great deal of courage to see through the uncertainties and dissenting voices to choose to reject the comfortable certainties of the past and invite a huge level of change, based on little more than a belief that that’s where opportunity lay.

Today, 45 years on, Heather is sanguine about the seismic shift that she and her fellow Board members saw coming.

“I think we all knew there was a need for the industry to be more responsible. The issues we faced were how to achieve that: via what processes and over what timescale? Many of the changes required increased costs or risked turning away business. Of course, we had to make these changes but we also had to remain in the market long enough to see them through.”

History now shows that this single issue heralded many of the changes the waste industry has since undergone: professionalism, consolidation, specialisation, while not alien concepts beforehand, have all become commonplace in the years since 1972.

One thing that hasn’t changed much in all that time is the strong culture within CSG; where employees are still able to think of themselves as part of the ‘extended family’. As in the rest of society, the style has become less deferential, although here too, Heather can claim to have driven this progression.

“My father was always ‘Mr Hart’ and even the Board used to refer to each other in this way. When I started, it was natural to everyone that I’d be greeted ‘Miss Heather’. I was never comfortable with that and preferred just ‘Heather’, so we began to adopt a first-name culture, which still exists today.”

It’s a culture that’s often remarked upon by new starters and it’s one that’s made more evident by the number of people who’ve been on the payroll for twenty, thirty, even fifty years. To Heather, this is more than just a statistic; it’s part of the very essence of CSG.

“The importance of having a mix of different people, with different experiences and backgrounds, each learning from the other, is hugely underestimated.”

Today, CSG has revenues of over £60m and profits of over £4.5m. In such rarefied business circles, the term ‘family business’ is often derided, as shorthand for parochialism or lack of professional impetus. Is CSG really still a family business?

“We’ve always needed professional management at the highest levels – and we’ve backed them – but the involvement of the family adds focus”, Heather insists.

Perhaps the most prominent evidence of CSG’s unique heritage is the Margaret Hart Trust, set up in 1975 by Bunny’s wife, (Heather and Hilary’s mother) as a lasting tribute to CSG’s Founder. The trust was established to provide later-life assistance to any retired CSG employee with over 10 years’ service as well as any current employee who might be long term sick.

“It assists with gardening, stair-lifts, holidays amongst many other things – and we have a lovely party for all those it helps every year, which is great fun. I think its greatest achievement is that it has consistently enabled people to keep living in their own homes for longer. My sister Hilary chairs the Trust and we are both very proud of it.”

CSG has always tried to combine the best of both worlds: the achievement and capability of a dynamic corporation with the lighter touch and firmer identity of a family concern. It’s a rare combination and one that’s a testimony to the vision, not just of the man who started it all, but to his descendants who have worked to retain the essence of that family business, established 83 years ago.

CSG: The Hart Of Waste

On By pauljbenthamIn Client: Cleansing Service Group

Posted on www.csg.co.uk/blog on July 12th 2017

http://www.csg.co.uk/blog/the-hart-of-waste/

The great and the good of CSG gathered in a Hampshire hotel recently to celebrate another landmark occasion in the company’s long and illustrious history.

The cause for celebration was the launch of CSG’s second book, ‘The Hart of Waste’, an updated history of the company founded by Edgar ‘Bunny’ Hart in 1934. As with the previous book on CSG, ‘Waste Matters’, published in 2002, the new book was written by Nigel Watson, an accomplished writer and corporate historian.

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The guests gathered at the Solent Hotel, close to CSG’s Fareham head office at the end of the day.  The fact that our AGM had been held that afternoon meant that many important stakeholders could be present.  One such luminary was CSG’s former Managing Director, Ken Pee, who’d flown in from his home in Cyprus for the occasion.

After a convivial drinks reception, we were invited into the function room and entered a room dressed with CSG branding, a projector and screen and, of course, a table groaning under the weight of numerous copies of the new book.  Many guests filtered into the theatre seating area while others chose to stand towards the back of the room while they waited for proceedings to start.

First to speak was Heather Hart, CSG’s Chair and Bunny’s daughter, who welcomed the assembled throng and explained how it was that this second book came to be commissioned – a conversation over a glass of wine, on holiday with her sister, Hilary.

In historical terms, it may seem that fifteen years is a barely significant interlude but such is the pace of change in all areas of life, a mere decade and a half seems like half a lifetime away, particularly in some aspects of life. For example, a quick Google search uncovers an article in which 2002 was predicted to be “the year of Broadband Britain” – which means most people were still accessing the internet by dial-up modems. In fact, Google itself was only four years old, back then and as likely to be the search engine of choice for most people as Yahoo, Excite or Alta Vista – remember them? Facebook didn’t even exist (Mark Zuckerburg enrolled at Harvard in 2002 on his way to creating thefacebook, as it was once known) so social networking and social media were little more than concepts. It really was a very different world.

In the world of waste, the pace of change has been just as bewildering. A veritable slew of legislation in the last fifteen years has led to innumerable disposal practices that were commonplace in 2002 becoming outlawed – each requiring a more professional, more regulated technique of treatment. It may be ‘only fifteen years’ but in truth, it’s easily enough to warrant an entire re-telling of the official story of CSG.

Having given some insight into the creation of the book and with all the right people thanked for their participation and assistance, Heather passed the microphone to Neil Richards, CSG’s ebullient Managing Director. Neil paid particular tribute to the unique way that CSG is run, a reliance on self-sufficiency and a faith in old-fashioned values that encourages a sense of belonging and shared purpose amongst all who join the business.

Neil referred to the very distinct culture at CSG, a careful mix of the familiarity of family businesses with the professionalism of large corporations. It’s certainly no accident that the new book carefully inter-weaves pages of every element of the current CSG team all the way along the company’s timeline of events throughout its 170-odd pages and it perfectly reflects Neil’s words.

The evening was rounded off by a sneak preview of CSG’s new company video (more on that, later this year) before the books on display were given to each of those present. Many even took the opportunity to ask Heather to sign their copy – which she was delighted to do.

As the conversations carried on around the room and into the night, there was a clear sense that the launch of a book charting a company’s history was, far from being merely a documentary of the past, more a starting point to the next chapter in the remarkable story of success that all started with one man’s dream.

CSG: Click Here For More Understanding

On By pauljbenthamIn Client: Cleansing Service Group

Posted on www.csg.co.uk/blog on May 15th 2017

http://www.csg.co.uk/blog/click-here-for-more-understanding/

We were pleased to welcome a new member of the team to our Cadishead office, last month. Daryl Tunningley joins us as a Marketing Executive, giving particular focus to our online activities.

Daryl, 26, hails from York and grew up around one of Britain’s most picturesque cities, although he jokes that the downside to all that historic splendour is that “you spend a lot of time dodging the tourists!”

He began his career curating website content at Persimmon, the house builder, at their Leeds office. Before long, he’d developed the role to such a degree that he became their Marketing Co-ordinator. “I just developed an aptitude for marketing, combining my writing skills with an appreciation for good design but above all, applying common sense and logical thinking to make improvements based on what the analysis was telling me.”

Marketing is a field which has attracted some strong stereotypes over the years, with many still believing it to be the domain of brash, risk-taking ‘Mad Men’ types, too often full of their own self-importance. In fact, in most companies, day-to-day marketing has undergone something of a quiet revolution over the last decade. Since the arrival of the Internet, search engines and, more particularly, social media, it’s now a department awash with very detailed performance data, measuring every click and every view of every piece of content available. Someone has to sift through this tidal wave of information and turn it all into knowledge, which in turn informs the strategy.

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A typical analytics dashboard, showing a tiny fraction of the data available to today’s marketing teams.   Photo: www.kaushik.net

You sense this is a role perfectly suited to Daryl. He speaks precisely and unhurriedly, favouring clarity over brevity, suggesting a level of thoroughness that the marketing dinosaurs of the past would find irksome. “I like the fact that my role gives me an end-to-end view of the whole business. This gives me a better chance to understand every part of the process and ensure I can support each one in the best way possible.”

Daryl’s capability for self-teaching is not restricted to his working life: he plays his Fender Jaguar electric guitar “when I can”; his musical ability another product of his auto-didacticism. He also reads widely, with particular interest in Science Fiction and History, “mostly European and any period from Medieval to Modern. I find it fascinating to see how – and why – it is that we are where we are at this point in time.”

Perhaps most surprisingly, Daryl’s embrace of the world of social media comes to an end when it’s time to go home. “I don’t engage in social media at all in a personal capacity”, he tells me, which at first seems an odd paradox but on explanation, becomes perfectly logical. “I remember hearing once that ‘chefs never cook’ and that explains how I feel about it. Social media is a powerful tool but I view it as a means to lead people to the content on our site. The analytical aspect of it all is the most interesting feature for me.”

His next big project is to co-ordinate the design and build of the new CSG website, in production later this year. Needless to say, the ability of the site to provide as much meaningful data as possible will be at the top of his wish-list.

In the meantime, he’s still in the process of increasing CSG’s reporting capability and analytics. If you happen to be the first person who’s taken the time to read as far as this, the last sentence of this blogpost, he’ll probably know all about it.

CSG: Waste Matters More

On By pauljbenthamIn Client: Cleansing Service Group

Posted on www.csg.co.uk/blog on November 2nd 2016

http://www.csg.co.uk/blog/waste-matters-more/

In 2002, CSG did something rather amazing and we’re about to do it again! Fourteen years ago, we commissioned Nigel Watson, a respected corporate historian, to write a definitive ‘History of Cleansing Service Group’. In 2016, we’re about to launch the updated version!

The original book was (and still is) an impressive piece of work. As you’d expect, it chronicled the entire lifespan of the company to date in great detail over the 69 years from 1933 to 2002. For context, it also examined the development of the waste industry from its very beginnings and delved into the history of the Hart family, two generations either side of the company’s founder Edgar ‘Bunny’ Hart.

Perhaps of most obvious interest to anyone connected with the waste industry, Waste Matters remains a useful way to communicate our history to our customers in a way that most companies would these days hesitate to choose. Most companies can manage a page on their website entitled ‘Our History’ but how many a proud enough of their heritage to commit it to a physical hardback book that would grace any coffee table?

It’s for this reason that we’ve chosen to update Waste Matters. Fourteen years may not seem all that much over the now 83 years of CSG’s existence but in a fast-moving, environmentally-conscious world where the sustainable treatment of waste has become ever more necessary, even 2002 now seems like a different world. You could say that this revision of not a case merely of ‘More Waste Matters’ but ‘Waste Matters More’.

The new version of the book is currently being compiled and is expected to be in print next year. Look out for an announcement in due course – and, if you’re already a CSG customer, let us know if you’d like a copy!