Bath Place Community Venture held a party last week to celebrate its Recycling Memories project, which explored how previous generations used to 'make do and mend' to ensure nothing went to waste.

Net curtains were cut up and used to make French-style bras, jackets were reworked inside out by tailors and many household containers enjoyed second incarnations in the garden or kitchen.

The evening featured film of a rag and bone man, photographs of how clothes and objects were reused as well as art, photography and even a slide show.

Organiser Fiona Henderson said: "It was absolutely clear that people had been recycling for years and years.

"One of the comments that one person came out with was that they had never heard of recycling but were actually doing it all the time.

"People recycled absolutely everything. If you listened to them they would claim they never threw anything away."

Clothes were handed down or passed to charity shops, socks were darned and trousers patched.

Food leftovers would be reheated as 'bubble and squeak' or fed to pets.

Many families kept animals for other purposes.

Miss Henderson said: "It seems allotments were quite key to recycling.

"Before laws changed, people were allowed to keep pigs and they would eat anything."

If no more use could be wrung out of items, they would keep the family warm.

Miss Henderson added: "Because people were able to have open fires or bonfires at home, if there was anything that really couldn't be reused they would burn it."

Call the Courier on 457720 if you remember commonplace or unlikely ways of recycling from the past.


Tribute has been paid to Warwick historian Tony Talliss, whose memory will live on overseas.

Writing from Corvallis, Oregon relatives of Mr Talliss, Terry and Jan Tallis called his death "a loss to history".

They recalled hours spent with the historian, who had researched his family's history back to Richard Talliss in the 1600s, and also gave the couple a tour of Warwick that would be the envy of any tour guide.

Tony Talliss documented how one 's' from the family name was lost when an ancestor crossed the Atlantic to live in Canada.

The couple wrote: "He was such a wonderful man, full of energy, and knowledge.

"We shall treasure his many wonderful information-laced letters he sent to us about the Tallis family and we will miss his sage comments and his insistence on accuracy.

"He really touched his distant relatives over here on this side of the pond."