The Power of Smell

 

Recently I was visiting an old block of flats (Edwardian?).  Climbing the communal stairs I was struck, to the point of pausing my ascent, by a vague smell.  Not an unpleasant smell.  Not one that I would associate with rubbish or neglect.  Indeed, the block is very well maintained.  It took me a moment to appreciate the significance of aroma.  It was exactly the same smell that I associate with the tenement block in Cambridge Heath Road, east London, that my Grandparents lived in.  I say ‘associate with’ but I don’t think I have ever encountered or even thought about the smell since I was a young child.  In a moment I was back to the flat occupied by Nan and Pop (as I knew them).  They moved from that address in about 1968 to go to a flat in Hackney.  They stayed there only a short while before moving to a another, newly built, ground floor flat around the corner from their original address.  The other smell I associate with visits to the grandparental home is that of home cooked lentil and bacon soup – a staple that has continued through another couple of generations and probably goes back long before my grandparents.

Smells are very powerful memory triggers.  Not long ago I noticed the smell of the London Underground.  At Lambeth North I detected the smell of the Underground as it was many years ago, as I remember it from childhood.    Like the smell in the block of flats I cannot describe the components of the odour – just the immediate connection with times past.    

How reliable are such memory triggers?  I don’t know.  Our minds play tricks on us.  Unlike sights and sounds we don’t have photographs, films or recordings to evidence our memories (or even to corrupt the evidence of our memories).

There is a lot of academic literature on the link between memory and smell.  It is of course possible to imagine smells that aren’t there (phantosmia).  It seems that the memory of smells is a complex subject that touches on the ancient needs of our ancestors to detect dangers and food.

I do know just what an impact olfactory memories can have.  The sense of time and place is almost overwhelming.  Impactive enough to set me off again on the long neglected task of researching the complex background of the Scott/Duncan/McGavin families. 

 

Philip Trendall

April 2023