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Old Church Tap

Swifty

doesn't negotiate with terriers
Joined
Sep 15, 2013
Messages
33,608
This isn't very exciting sorry, we took a pic of an old tap in our local church yard today .. I'm thinking it's manufacture date would be around mid 20th century (the lettering looks quite modern) and it's purpose possibly would have been to attach larger hose pipes to it, maybe fire engine use or just to accommodate a larger hose to water the flowers in the grave yard ? ... can anyone help us learn anything more about this tap please ?

oldtap.jpg


edit: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shand_Mason

.. so likely to be a fire engine tap .. although this end (in the picture) of the church was bombed in '42/'43 so I'm thinking it survived the bombing ..
 
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I think it's a vintage fire hydrant, because Shand, Mason & Co. specialized in fire engines and firefighting equipment. That company name ceased to exist in 1928.

Heavy-duty / industrial valves of this sort could be rebuilt. The different metal colors on the valve assembly might indicate this one was rebuilt at some point - possibly replacing the valve main body alone and re-using the original (presumably pre-1928) hand wheel.
 
I think it's a vintage fire hydrant, because Shand, Mason & Co. specialized in fire engines and firefighting equipment. That company name ceased to exist in 1928.

Heavy-duty / industrial valves of this sort could be rebuilt. The different metal colors on the valve assembly might indicate this one was rebuilt at some point - possibly replacing the valve main body alone and re-using the original (presumably pre-1928) hand wheel.
Apparently during the later years they got into fire boat hydrant manufacture which would also fit with this being a coastal church .. I like the idea of it being a refurb job, I even know an old fella who was alive to sweep up the bomb rubble the day after the church was hit although I doubt he'll remember this particular tap? .. he still lives just around the back of the church to this day :cool:
 
Since Shand, Mason & Co. were building and marketing entire fire engines, it would make sense that they would also offer valves - or maybe entire hydrant installations - designed to match the hose fittings on their fire engines. Their fire engine business started in the mid-19th century, before there was likely to have been any widespread standards or regulatory specifications.
 
Ooh, that looks very like a Chubb 5-lever battleship padlock. Very much a WW2 (and Cold War, my era) defence standard.

Many's the time I've greased and cleaned a Chubb 5-lever. The last person has put the padlock back on upside-up, which is wrong...in exposed locations, it should be locked upside-down, to prevent the direct ingress of rainwater. And the keyhole coverleaf should be covering the keyhole (with the foil from a pack o' Woodbines wedged under the leaf, an a')
 
Apparently during the later years they got into fire boat hydrant manufacture which would also fit with this being a coastal church .. I like the idea of it being a refurb job, I even know an old fella who was alive to sweep up the bomb rubble the day after the church was hit although I doubt he'll remember this particular tap? .. he still lives just around the back of the church to this day :cool:
I'd ask him if you see him. Sort of thing people do remember, weirdly!

Probably as you think, re-using things that came to hand.

I wondered for years why when they grubbed up a load of Victorian gravestones in my churchyard in 1980, several were left standing. Assumed those ones too tough to shift. I lived within sight of this and never saw it happen - one day, the Victorian headstones there. The next day - vanished.

Then recently we were walking dog up there and got talking with an elderly gent who it turned out, was a local farmer who had since he was a kid in the 1930s or 40s, helped out with the graveyard, (his farm slightly out of the village so I had never met him or heard of him) and so I asked him what I'd been wondering for years why several Victorian graves were left and the new folk buried round em. He said him and his dad went up there with some farm equipment and keeled over the old stones, no problem. He said they left several they were told to leave - they could have grubbed them up easily, but those people still had relatives in the village, according to the then vicar. Mystery solved.
 
I'd ask him if you see him. Sort of thing people do remember, weirdly!

Probably as you think, re-using things that came to hand.

I wondered for years why when they grubbed up a load of Victorian gravestones in my churchyard in 1980, several were left standing. Assumed those ones too tough to shift. I lived within sight of this and never saw it happen - one day, the Victorian headstones there. The next day - vanished.

Then recently we were walking dog up there and got talking with an elderly gent who it turned out, was a local farmer who had since he was a kid in the 1930s or 40s, helped out with the graveyard, (his farm slightly out of the village so I had never met him or heard of him) and so I asked him what I'd been wondering for years why several Victorian graves were left and the new folk buried round em. He said him and his dad went up there with some farm equipment and keeled over the old stones, no problem. He said they left several they were told to leave - they could have grubbed them up easily, but those people still had relatives in the village, according to the then vicar. Mystery solved.
When I was at college (Nuneaton), me and a friend hit on a money making scheme. We had access to a silk screen printing machine so would sometimes make our own T.Shirts.

We were in a graveyard one day in '90, I decided to take a rubbing of some of the higher detailed but more ancient gravestones, mainly because the engraved art on them was amazing. I made a T Shirt, a few of the goths at college loved it and we realised we could sell a few, the older the gravestone, the less likely we would be to offend any potential surviving relatives (although it was still a possibility).

We decided to use this potential problem to our advantage. We created laminated tags for the T Shirts with a logo called Grave Creations as well as a few business cards but with no phone number or address, we knew the owners of most of the independent record shops that were willing to sell them for a small cut, we also tipped them off in advance that we were going to anonymously phone the local paper and complain about them being in bad taste which worked a treat because no one knew who was making them or in fact actually cared. All of the shirts were black, our rubbings were used as stencils with the lettering being gold or silver paint and green paints were used to sponge mould artistically around the print. We made quite a lot of money doing that and didn't annoy any relatives.

I expect the idea would still work today.
 
Tada! A business idea for you, Swifty. Go back to doing T-shirts.
I'd need access to a silk screen printing machine .. funnily enough, there is someone in Cromer who might be up to it and hand makes screen printed T shirts although he's running a legitimate premises based business .. and we certainly wouldn't get away with the same trick here (that is, grave rubbings from local cemeteries) because a lot of the same families still live here, the family lines follow at least a couple of centuries in some cases ..

The T Shirt independent Cromer bloke's shop ..

https://dabatag.co.uk
 
I'd need access to a silk screen printing machine .. funnily enough, there is someone in Cromer who might be up to it although he's running a legitimate premises based business .. and we certainly wouldn't get away with the same trick here (that is, grave rubbings from local cemeteries) because a lot of the same families still live here, the family lines follow at least a couple of centuries in some cases ..

The T Shirt independent Cromer bloke's shop ..

https://dabatag.co.uk
Build your own. I made one at school (they probably replaced it long ago).
 
I'd need access to a silk screen printing machine .. funnily enough, there is someone in Cromer who might be up to it and hand makes screen printed T shirts although he's running a legitimate premises based business .. and we certainly wouldn't get away with the same trick here (that is, grave rubbings from local cemeteries) because a lot of the same families still live here, the family lines follow at least a couple of centuries in some cases ..

The T Shirt independent Cromer bloke's shop ..

https://dabatag.co.uk
My son's an art student and has made £ on the side doing T shirts. His gfriend makes quite a few bob on Etsy apparently, doing similar. Might be some brass in it! He told me they get the basic T shirts in Primark and screen print them using their heavily subsidised print shop at uni...
 
My son's an art student and has made £ on the side doing T shirts. His gfriend makes quite a few bob on Etsy apparently, doing similar. Might be some brass in it! He told me they get the basic T shirts in Primark and screen print them using their heavily subsidised print shop at uni...
Good for them, no one asked us to pay anything at NWCTA, we also just paid for the T Shirts .. there's definitely some brass in it.
 
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