Sweeping chimneys in Mobberley
Mobberley is a working village strung out along a couple of miles of road rather than gathered round a centre, and the chimneys reflect that. There are farmhouses and cottages that predate any idea of a flue liner, converted barns and outbuildings with modern stoves put into old openings, and a run of newer houses along the main road with purpose-built flues.
The thing that sets Mobberley and the villages around it apart from the suburbs we also cover is how hard the appliances work. In Cheadle or Timperley a woodburner is usually an evening luxury on top of the gas central heating. Out here it is often doing genuine heating, sometimes as the main source. That changes the sweeping frequency entirely — twice a season for a stove in regular use, not once a year.
It also changes what we find. A flue that is lit most evenings from October to April builds deposits far faster than one used a dozen times over Christmas, and if the logs are not properly seasoned the result is tar rather than soot.