MEMORIES of the days when proud housewives would donkey stone their front step and windowsill were revived with a piece I wrote recently.
Old chum and colleague Mike Shaw found an Examiner cutting among his personal archive that recorded the last manufacturer of donkey stones – the wonderfully named Eli Whalley of Ashon-under-Lyne – closed for business in 1979.
Ashton’s Portland Basin Industrial Heritage Centre website says: “Eli Whalley’s company reached its peak during the 1930s when it was producing around 2.5 million donkey stones every year.”
By 1973 production had shrunk to 720,000 stones a year. But the company continued making them for another six years and was the world’s last donkey stone manufacturer.
Mike’s newspaper cutting also recorded an attempt to revive the donkey stone after people kept asking for them on local markets. A chap in Dukinfield started producing them more than 30 years ago and began to train three lads in the skill – they were made from powdered stone.
Unfortunately, he was only selling 2,500 a week at 4.5p each. Which meant, by my calculation, an income of £112.50 a week. Between four of them. I doubt if the business survived for very long.
