Brunswick East's cobbled laneways

Sat 28/9/13

In the Brunswick East area, where I'm renting, there exists a number of cobbled laneways. This bluestone cobbling also lines the gutters in the area. These laneways all vary in their width, some being barely wider than a car, yet have garage doors along their length. Now, I normally drive a Tarago, with a long wheel base & a rather large turning circle. I would have no hope of turning the Tarago into a garage from some of these laneways.

 



 

In some cases, there is an intersection of laneways. In fact, some of these laneways are actually named & sign posted streets, yet again, are only wide enough for a single car.

 

Photo: this narrow length you are looking down is sign posted as Mary St 

Photo: the intersection of Mary St with a laneway

 

Many laneways appear to have been acquired by some blocks of land. Some have been turned into driveways to allow front access to homes, as access to a rear subdivision or simply just boarded up.

 

 

 



The history behind these laneways is as follows.....

Prior to the establishment of any form of sewerage system in the Melbourne area, the majority of sewerage, be it kitchen, bathroom or laundry waste, was simply disposed of down open drains that flowed into street channels. This waste mixed with the waste from stables & industries & as the drains were open.... well, you can imagine.
The disposal of solid human waste, however, followed a different procedure. A pan closet toilet, or "thunderbox", was a wooden structure located as far from the house as possible. The "thunderbox" contained a receptacle for collection of solid waste. These alleyways were constructed to allow the collection of this waste by a "nightman", so called because he carried out his collections at night. Once a week, the nightman would collect the pans from a neighbourhood. The waste, often called "nightsoil", was carted to Melbourne's outskirts to be used as fertiliser by market gardeners.
By the 1880's, however, an increasing Melbourne population meant the nightmen couldn't keep up. Conditions became extremely unsanitary & infectious diseases such as typhoid became prevalent. The installation of a sewerage system, though expensive, was deemed the only viable solution.
In some areas, you can see that some alleyways have been closed off from being a thoroughfare. Garages have been built on others. Now, they simply give a property the advantage of a rear entrance/exit.

Photo: a panorama shot of houses in a block backing onto a laneway