Over the years Knutsford's road sweep, Sam Burgess, slogged thousands of miles with his little hand cart, sweeping the footpath and cleaning the grids.

But no one ever knew where he dumped his rubbish at the end of his long, working day.

"We never knew, but it never caused a nuisance," Anthony Ellis, of Lynton Close, wrote in last week's Knutsford Guardian.

On Friday, though, his son, Stanley, came clean.

"He had four little rubbish tips hidden in trees set back from the road," he said.

"He would leave the waste there and a lorry would pick it up every now and again."

Today, the four-mile round trip from Knutsford Parish Church to the Drovers Arms that used to take Sam weeks, is done by machine in two-and-a-half hours.

But Mr Ellis says it is not the same.

"Where Sam would find a way of sweeping under parked cars, the machine just drove round them," he said.

Sam - nicknamed King of the Road - got the job with Cheshire County Council in 1947 when he was 59.

In his sturdy boots, trilby and warm coat, he spent eight hours a day sweeping the footpath and cleaning the grids.

"He took great pride in cleaning the road and that is why it always looked spotless," said Stanley.

"And I think he loved the job because he got to meet people."

Sam retired in 1962, telling the Knutsford Guardian: "It's time to let someone else have a go."

He died three years later.