In your Echo: The chimney expert who looked back on sweeping changes to his traditional Sunderland business
Sunderland’s chimney-sweeping tradition, which had lasted for centuries, was facing a bleak future in the 1980s.
George Harnett, whose family’s business dated back to at least the 1700s, had mixed feelings in 1988 as he looked forward to his retirement.
More than 250 years of tradition
He had been working hard in the profession since he was 14 years old.
But 37 years ago, the Sunderland Echo reported: “He will enjoy putting his feet up after a job that started when he was 14, but with only two daughters and no sons to succeed him, the brushes will be put away and the Gray Road premises locked up for good.
“The business has seen George’s father, grandfather and generations before them sweep aside their rivals to establish what has become one of the town’s oldest businesses.”
‘It has been an interesting job, meeting all kinds of people’
George told the Sunderland Echo in 1988: “My father traced the family back through 200 years of sweeps and probably would have gone further if he had had the time.
“It has been an interesting job, meeting all kinds of people and working in all kinds of houses and buildings.
“But my uncle was the best one for telling a tale. He once told me he pushed a metal ball down the chimney of The Grand Hotel and covered the whole of the Blackburn Rovers football team in soot.”
Tell us about the traditional jobs which your family did. And we want to know if George really was the last of his profession in Sunderland.
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