Moors Demolition Man

The compensation money bought him a small holding and some dilapidated buildings on the moor above Halifax town, to escape from the industrial smog of the valley bottom. The local Polish doctor said the fresh air up there, would help to heal his wounds after his accident in the mill. He omitted telling him that the cold winds high up there, would likely freeze his blood in the long winters and the heavy rains would have webbed his feet, had they not been permanently stuffed into large wellies. These had been well padded out with warm woollen socks, knitted by his wife Wanda, from wool remnants from the blanket factory, where she worked as a mender.

They had moved out of their cramped terrace, back-to-earth house, during the beginnings of a hot summer. Life had been idyllic until the Autumnal gales sounded their warnings with blasts of icy winds tearing through the cracks and gaps in the rough sandstone walls. The horizontal rain tore at stone tiles, allowing free ingress to the water, creating swimming size puddles throughout the house. Even a good draught of the best Wyborowa vodka couldn’t keep the cold at bay. At least the horizontal rain kept out of their wellies.

Attempts at filling the gaps in the stone with mortar failed miserably in that the rain washed it away and any that did set, was soon cracked and dislodged by the strong winds actually moving and wobbling the stone bricks and roof tiles, allowing the rain to free flow and the wind free passage into the interior. A know-it-all builder simply advised them to wait until early Summer and then the lime mortar would have time to bind and set but this was just Autumn and the worst of the Winter was to come. Having gone through some severe winters in the Polish Carpathians and survived much deprivation during the War in various German concentration camps, a little discomfort was not too much of a setback for a resourceful fellow.

He remembered stuffing holes and cracks in the in the timber houses in the Polish mountains with snow during the winter to hold out the winds, so one weekend he got his four children to dig for the yellow sticky clay in the banks of the stream, which was then carried in buckets by his wife, for him to slap it in the gaps of the walls and between the roof tiles, carrying out an overall if belated pointing job. It wasn’t a pretty sight with yellow clay streaking down from the roof and from the walls but it clagged the holes, as only Yorkshireclay can. It kept out the bitter wind and adequately waterproofed the outer shell. The most significant feature was that it cut out the chilling wail of the howling winds as they pierced the walls and whistled away a tuneless discordant crescendo of unbelievable decibels.

The temperatures in the old decrepit farmhouse increased from freezer to just above refrigerator proportions that even the large open English fire could only raise by more than a degree or two. Six persons were seen every evening rotating on vertical spits in front of the open fire. Roasting on one side and freezing to death on the other until one by one they gave in and rushed off to bed to give extra prayers to the inventor of the electric blanket. Any heat created by such an uneconomical invention of an open English fire, was driven up the skies by the fearful draw of the chimney, with the ample aid of the prevailing gales. This problem had to be solved quickly because the wife’s wage and the meagre bank savings were quickly evaporating on coal to heat the upper atmosphere. The local blacksmith was brought in to cobble together an iron enclosed stove that fitted into the gaping mouth of the open fireplace. Now it was possible to watch the black and white television in a degree of comfort, sitting on a chair rather than freeze-thawing on the spit, standing in front of the open fire. The children were able to finish their homework at home rather than on the cramped bus home. Before, they were known to stay at school until kicked out by the caretaker and also to miss their bus stop deliberately to do the round journey of the villages, in their efforts to stay in the warmth. A normal family life was rekindled and life in this desolate place was becoming more manageable and even enjoyable.

Mr. Leszecki recovered rapidly from his injuries. The doctor put it down to his professional care and invigorating clean air up on the moor. Mr. Leszecki put it down to excessive shivering and the odd spot of vodka anti-freeze. On the good days, he was now able to get out and explore his surroundings and property of the small holding he had acquired under seemingly false pretences of an Indian summer. The term ‘small’ was a misnomer in that his land covered a sizeable plateau and since the boundary walls had long since collapsed, it extended out onto the wild heather moor which was quickly encroaching onto his land. The outer gaggle of buildings and sheds were in a sorry state and needed much excavation to discover their hidden secrets. The stone roofing slates had long been ripped off as the retaining nails had rusted and the tiles had fallen down through the rafters onto unknown treasures beneath.

A mornings’ excavation revealed the front working end of a small lorry. A bit of tinkering, lots of Polish swearing and hard swings on the starting handle, managed to bring the old beast to life. Mr Leszecki put it down to his innate mechanical skills but admitted that the driving force for the regeneration of life in the old engine was a substantial slug of vodka for his own internal lubrication and a generous pour into the carburettor to kick start the engine. He had learned that trick during the severe winters in Poland before the War. One had to be careful with the amount fed into the carburettor. Too little and you got only a splutter, too much had dire consequences of an engine on fire and in either case it was a waste of good vodka which was far more suited for internal satisfaction rather than internal combustion.

Further excavation revealed a flatbed truck in relatively good condition having been cocooned and protected by building rubble for many a year. Now that it was uncovered it would suffer the ravages of the weather which wouldn’t be too kind to this elderly machine. The roof to the garage would need to be repaired and new doors made. A useable tarpaulin was found and spread over the working end of the truck as temporary protection and a start was made on selecting and replacing the stone roof tiles. It was slow and laborious work, mainly in selecting the right sized tiles and getting them onto the roof. Fortunately, the initial builders had been aware and accustomed to the rigours of the moorland climate and had installed timbers fit for a Methodist Chapel rather than a lowly barn.

On an infrequent visit down to the smog in the valley, he came across a small industrial building in a sorry state but with a serviceable roof of stone tiles. On enquiring with the owner, Mr. Leszecki determined it was due for demolition to make way for a new housing estate. They struck a deal that he could have the tiles but had to demolish the whole structure and cart it all away, including any contents. The truck came into its own. Its first job was to carry all the iron junk in the building to the local scrap yard. This paid for a tank full of fuel and two nearly new but serviceable tyres. Its second job, with the added muscle of his sons, was to move the heavy iron doors to the blacksmith for him to cut them down to size for his own building on the moor.

The stone slates were carefully removed and numbered with chalk so that they could be replaced on the building back on the farm. The rafters were of good wood and these were taken to the local timber yard and with the proceeds a load of coal was purchased to keep the cold at bay. The walls were stone ashlar outers with a brick inner skin and these were taken down easily since the original builders had used a lime mortar which was still relatively soft and pliable but burnt any exposed skin so a sturdy pair of gloves had to be purchased for protection.

The stone and bricks were dumped in a corner of his land. The lime mortar left on the site was a problem since he would have to shovel it up onto the flatbed. His back was just not up to it so he had to pay some labourers to help out in this task. This again was dumped on his land near the moor. The farmer next door suggested it might just keep the ever-creeping heather at bay and the rain would eventually wash it away anyway. The owner of the site was very happy with the outcome and he was left with roof material to finish his new garage, two nearly new tyres for the truck, a load of coal for the winter, doors and half a tank of fuel left in the truck. He was self satisfied with his lot and was ready for the winter to do its worst and it did. Snow drifts were something to behold that year but no one from the valley was foolhardy enough to venture out there and view.

They survived their first winter and Mr. Leszecki’s health and strength was improving fast but the children and their demands were growing as his savings were diminishing. He had to find a job and earn some money. Easy to get a job in the satanic mills but that was not for him, now he had experienced a life of clean and extra invigorating air up on the moors. Work on a farm was too heavy and not very good for his weakened back. Standing as a barman or shop assistant also aggravated his back problem. He needed a varied job that provided some exercise but that seemed impossible. He even considered retraining as an electrician or a plumber but this wouldn’t feed or clothe his children in the interim.

Every Sunday afternoon he had to pick up his wife Wanda, who attended a Polish Circle meeting at the Polish Legion Club, in the basement of a converted Baptist Chapel in town. He parked his truck nearby and walked to the club. He passed a derelict church with signs showing it was due for demolition and stopped to gaze and reminisce at his own early attempts at such work. It was hard but he had enjoyed it. He continued to the club and since the women or ladies were still engaged, he carried on to the bar for a swift half or two. The usual crowd were there with a few tradesmen and businesspeople. He brought up the topic of the nearby Chapel and a builder friend said he wouldn’t touch demolition with a barge pole. It was always outside work and always different with difficult problems he ventured. That sounded just what he would enjoy and he asked a few more questions and was advised that he should talk to the Planning Officer at the Town Hall.

The Planning Officer was very helpful, patient but not very encouraging. He told Mr. Leszecki that demolishing Chapels and Churches was the least profitable of all demolition jobs they had on offer. There was a lot of unusable stonework such as the arched window, columns and doorways. This had to be hauled away and dumped at a cost and no profit, at the landfill sites. The proportion of recoverable stone was small relative to the work involved but on the other hand the contracts were easy to obtain since most of the regular companies avoided this kind of work, also the stone was generally of good quality but it all needed reworking to return it to its original buff colour, from the years of black grime of industrial pollution. He told Mr. Leszecki that there were a lot of chapels and churches due for demolition since many had long since been abandoned and some even in dangerous condition but that most of the lead metal, which was of value, had long gone. Mr. Leszecki took away a number of details of demolition sites to ponder over.

He inspected a small chapel due for demolition, down in the valley, not too far away from his own property. It was four or five times the size of the first building he had demolished so he had some idea of the effort involved and the possible time scale. His first job was to check where he could sell the reworked stone and there were plenty of buyers to be had. He then struck lucky when he visited the neighbouring farm to borrow or rent a tractor with a shovel for scooping and loading the stone onto the trucks. His neighbour told him of some old acquaintances who were former stone masons and might be interested in doing some work for pocket money. Getting rid of the unusable stone was easy he would dump that on his land. The waste rubble would go to the tip and he would just have to pay for that. There was plenty of labour and lorries with drivers to hire, for the day or job. He decided to take the plunge.

He signed the first contract, to be paid on completion and organised the demolition with labour and trucks. The weather for once helped and the job was finished within the planned time. He had enough cash left over to buy a second-hand tractor and pay the masons to rework the stone on his farm, the proceeds of which might turn him a small profit or even a wage. Encouraged by his first attempt he became more ambitious and acquired some Yorkshire ‘nouse’ and ‘cannyness’ in selling off slates, timber and any reusable fixtures and fittings. Any unsold wood was taken up to his holding for firewood to withstand the winter. He gathered around him a group of specialists who could be hired to carry out special jobs such as roofing, steeple jack work, site stone masons so that he could prepare the stone on site that could be hauled off direct to the builders. Owner drivers were only too willing to have a fill-in job and cash in hand. The bigger demolition contractors were also pleased with him in that they took all the plum jobs and left the dross to him. The Council often lumped two contracts together, a profitable mill building plus a chapel, and that ate into their profits.

During the winters, he busied himself reconstructing and rebuilding the outhouses so that they could be useable, weatherproof and windproof storage and working spaces for his masons and he gradually repaired the main farmhouse to make it more comfortable for his family. Winters were not the time to take on demolition work, not even for a mad Polak.

One Sunday afternoon, again he was in his favourite haunt propping up the bar at the Polish Club with the pretence of waiting for his wife attending the Polish Ladies Circle. He got talking to some friends and was introduced to one of his friend’s son who was visiting from London. The son, Janek was an Architect and specialised in refurbishing pubs, clubs and restaurants. He told them that the current popular theme was Gothic, with church-like arches and lots of stonework, statues and stone coffins. Mr Leszecki jokingly said he could provide him with a field full of Gothic stone that would make his hair creep. Instead of laughing, Janek the Architect, took it quite seriously and wanted to see his stock. After a few more drinks and after the ladies had finished their meeting, Mr. Leszecki, accompanied by his wife and Architect went off back home to view his stock heaped in his field.

Janek was taken aback by the amount and variety of stone arches, windows, niches, columns, gravestones, ornamental slabs and pedestals available. He said he would buy the lot but needed to know how many arches there were and the sizes etc. Mr. Leszecki assured him that his masons could clean up the stone and make up any lost pieces and size up the arches to the architect’s requirements. A deal was struck and Mr. Leszecki was to get his lads and engage some students to lay out as many arches as they could in the field, photograph them, measure them up and send to his London office the results.

A month later, on a frosty but clear day, four designers arrived with Janek the architect, to inspect the stone arch layouts and other stonework. The jobbing masons were called in and a long list of job repair orders drawn up. The masons were rather surprised when they were asked to cover any replacement stonework with grime to match the industrial patina of the original stones. This first job provided the stone masons with six weeks of work and returned a handsome profit for Mr. Leszecki, for a welcome change. He was assured that he could sell as many arches and Gothic paraphernalia as he could get hold of.

His list of preferred demolition jobs took a different perspective. He now chose churches with the greatest number of arches, windows, carvings and monuments that a building could muster. The demolition was done more carefully and precisely. Each item was photographed measured and numbered and details were sent off to London for inclusion in another grand scheme. Eventually all good things have to come to an end and the fashion changed and Gothic was out, for some new-fangled design. Fortunately, this coincided with a scarcity of chapels and churches due for demolition locally. Now Mr. Leszecki had to take on the establishment and they weren’t very pleased to have another competitor on their patch, a successful one at that. Things had been too cosy for them all so far.

Much of the demolition work came up by word of mouth and Mr. Leszecki was excluded but the Town Council had to advertise their contracts and invited bids for their work which was mainly compulsory purchase buildings that had to be demolished to make way for road improvements. Again, the bidding system was complicated and Mr. Leszecki failed to gain the plum contracts and was left with the dross.

A particularly large carding mill came up for demolition to make way for the town bypass. The job came up for auction and caused quite a stir because of its size. Even the regulars sucked their teeth and pondered at the enormity of the task. It was a splendid building, built at the height of the woollen economy of the Town and no expense spared on its fine construction. It stood out as a fine symbol of wealth and status of its long-departed owner. The carding machinery had long since departed to some Far Eastern country, to be used again and against the local economy by cheap labour of far-off lands.

The day of the auction arrived and Mr. Leszecki prepared himself by a visit to the bank to check the amount of his savings, his overdraft limit and off he went to the auction rooms in town. The pompous auctioneer announced the one demolition lot he had and set out the terms of the auction. The auctioneer started the price at a thousand pounds and was greeted by silence and even some jeering. The price fell gradually as the auctioneer goaded the pundits into bidding. The price fell to four hundred and fifty and Mr. Leszecki shot up his hand and number card and the gavel fell, ‘Sold to the gentleman at the back.’ Unbeknownst to him and probably through his lack of proper understanding of English, he hadn’t realised that the format for this auction was different. It was a Dutch auction, with the price starting high and the first bidder to enter got the lot. The other interested parties left with a smirk as he went up to the clerk with some trepidation, to pay his deposit and sign the contract, wondering what he had got himself into, especially when he found that there were severe penalty clauses for lateness in carrying out the job.

His first job was to assess the amount and value of the reclaimed materials he had on hand. He got his sons to help in sketching and measuring the place to help in his calculations. He started at the top on the roof and would work down. The roof looked flat from the bottom but in fact was a series of pitched roofs of Welsh purple slate, surrounded by a magnificent stone balustrade. There was a large zinc coated water tank at one end. The slates were in good condition but worthless at the moment, the trend in the building trade was for fast fix concrete tiles. The stone balustrade and tiles would be taken down and stored in his field for future possible use. The roof timbers would go to the timber merchant.

There were three floors plus the ground floor and there were virtually the same enormous spaces supported by decorative cast iron pillars supporting long iron girders running across the width of the building. Plenty of stuff and weight for the scrap merchants but the decorative pillars might be of interest to Janek. He made a mental note to send him some pictures and dimensions. The steel girders supported cross timbers to which the flooring was attached. These would need further investigation. The sash windows were in remarkable condition and were obviously of some quality hard wood. He would check with his builder friend to see if they were worth reclaiming rather than used as firewood.

Mr. Leszecki decided to investigate the flooring while his son counted the windows. It was covered in solid waxy grease deposited over the years of raw wool handling. He scraped some off to expose the floor timbers. It was some six inches thick and black in colour. His son Tadek came over and they both inspected the substance. They decided it was the accumulation of grease from the sheep’s wool mixed with dust, soot and grime. Tadek told his father that the grease from sheep’s wool was called lanolin and it was used in ladies’ make-up his teacher had told him. They had a laugh at the thought of mum spreading this black stuff on her face.

Mr. Leszecki wrapped some in a handkerchief to take to the Town Hall chemist to check what it was and was it harmful to handle and how they could dispose of it. The floor timbers were of some kind of hard wood and difficult to jab with his knife and he would have to get his timber merchant around to assess its salvage value. There was a nice, enclosed yard at the back, fed by cranes from each floor. The removal of material floor by floor seemed straight forward apart from the sheer volume.

The chemist from the Town Hall sent him a letter for him to call round and that he had some interesting news for him. The timber merchant was even more excited and said that the timbers were worth a fortune. The crossbeams supporting the floor were of best oak and the floorboards were of teak nailed to the oak beams with bronze or copper nails which alone could fetch a small fortune in scrap value. He would send some specialist in to supervise the careful removal of the timbers. Even the staircases and doors were made of mahogany, all of it highly salvageable and valuable. His builder friend wanted all the window frames and also the bricks lining the walls which he could use for footings and internal walls. The outer stonework was all of even course and would sell easily.

His visit to the Town Hall was of greatest interest when the chemist told him the true value of all the lanolin he had in the mill. He explained it as laying out pound notes over the floors. He told him to get in touch with the local chemical firm who would come and scrape every little bit up for him. His last bit of good news was from Janek who wanted to buy all the iron supporting columns to decorate the warehouse conversions in Londoninto luxury flats, which was the current fad and trend.

Mr. Leszecki spent many days planning and assessing the demolition work and the salvage value of the whole job. He decided that he was sitting on a gold mine. The downside was that the whole job was too big for him to manage and organise especially with the deadlines. He decided to subcontract the whole job to the big boys but he would get the lion’s share of the salvage value.

This was a fortunate decision because his back problems had turned for the worse and he needed immediate surgery. This was his last involvement in demolition. He led a quiet life, tending to his collection of ancient trucks and tractors whilst watching his children flourish. His biggest two investments were to install oil fired central heating throughout his farm and outhouses and take the family to Poland to visit his brother, still living on a farm near Zakopane, in the Polish Carpathian Mountains.

Koniec