‘Wit a braw smell’: Occupational communities and memory as smell heritage in Scotland

This paper contributes to the growing field of sensory history with a discussion of memories as olfactory heritage in Scotland, using work as a lens to explore remembered and experienced smells. Odours of various types and intensities were encountered in paid and unpaid work in the twentieth century, much (though not all) of which has now disappeared with the collapse of Scotland’s industrial base, modern housing, improved hygiene and more effective sanitary and ‘nuisance’ regulation. Drawing upon workers’ oral history interview testimonies and other personal accounts (including online reminiscence forums) this essay comments on how smell is remembered and narrated by occupational communities. The analysis focuses around encountered workplace smells from housework, working the land and mining, the ‘heavy industries’ of steel, shipbuilding and dock work, through to working with organic matter and chemicals, such as animal slaughterhouses and the chemical factories across Glasgow. Aromas (obnoxious and pleasant) also escaped work environments and permeated neighbouring streets and communities creating distinctive ‘smellscapes’. In some cases, a persistent toxic and smelly legacy persisted long after factories closed – a tangible expression of what Sherry Lee Linkon has referred to as the ‘half-life’ of deindustrialization. The ‘stinky ocean’ left by the Tennant’s chemical works around Sighthill in north Glasgow is an example. Aromatic traces are retained in people’s memories and this paper makes a case for the value of existing archived oral history interviews as olfactory heritage, as well as showing the potential of and supporting the argument for extending sensory-based new oral history interviewing research in Scotland.