In My Grandmother's Day

Hosted by Cecily and Sue

Photos copyright: Maggie May

Although these photos were taken in the Black Country Living Museum in Birmingham, I can remember similar scenes in my Grandmother's home.

The fire range above with the brass fender round it was the heart and soul of my grandmother's back room. The coal fire used to be lit everyday, no matter how hot it was outside and I can remember feeling as though I was in a furnace when I was a child, visiting.

There was always a kettle on the hob, just like in the picture and sometimes there was washing drying or airing on the fender.

This was a typical kitchen scene but it was a room that was always called a scullery. There was cold water in the tap but any hot water had to be carried in from the fire.

This is just some of the equipment that was needed for washday. Notice the wooden rollers on the mangle and the dolly tub for rinsing that had to be hand filled. The dolly is the wooden paddle that had to be twisted by hand to agitate the washing. If you look above the mangle, you will see a tin bath hanging on the wall for the weekly baths (shared by all the members of the family) and all the hot water had to come from a small kettle heated on the coal fire. Understandably the bath was never very deep and the water was filthy by the time the last member of the family got in.

Notice the boiler in the corner for boiling up clothes. There is a space on the other side of the wall for a coal fire to be lit to heat the boiler. Think how that would be on a wet day, having to go outside and try to start a fire before the washing was even started.

The photo below was a typical toilet called a midden! It was just a hole with a bucket to catch everything. Fortunately, my grandmother had a modern outside toilet with a flush! The towns had sewers but out in the country the slops had to be buried.

Remind me never to moan again about my chores.

Washday Greens!

Since our family came back to live with us, the washing machine is much in use & I recently stopped to think how difficult it must have been for my mother to do the washing when I was a child.

I remember she used to have to get up very early on a Monday morning & light a large gas boiler that she had previously filled with buckets of cold water. I used to watch her grate up a hard bar of Fairy household soap. She filled "dolly tubs"to rinse the whites with. She used to scrub & sluice off the dirty hankies in the old stone sink.

Between boiling & rinsing everything had to be mangled carefully & again after the last rinse. Mangling was a hazardous task as you could scald yourself from the boiler & squash fingers in the mangle. Then there was starch to make up & certain things had to be dipped into it.

A whole weeks washing would need to be dried somehow. On a fine day, out on the washing line in a yard or garden. Sometimes the line would snap & the washing would be dirty again. On a wet day it all had to be draped round an open fire on a "maiden" which was a kind of wooden clothes horse, sometimes taking days to dry. Then the mammoth task of ironing. What a palaver!

However the smell of the hot washing coming out of the boiler is one of those never to be forgotten smells ............ a smell of wholesome goodness that even now sends me into a state of nostalgia when I remember it. Funny how you can "remember" a smell!

I am really glad that I do not have to face all the hard work that my mother had to.

The children are always secretly slipping strange objects into the washing that are not usually found until the programme has ended. I recently found a bright green, very clean looking "my little pony"that sprang from some item of clothing, startling me with the unexpectedness of it. Not long after that, I pulled out a soggy heart shaped note book and a little red glass heart, both treasures that had escaped my pre wash search. I consider myself very lucky that the red felt tee shirt from a Bratz doll did not colour the whole wash pink!

But by far the strangest thing that could ever have messed up a wash was found in Amber's trouser pocket, before it even went in. A raw, green Brussels sprout! As no one in the house likes Brussels sprouts, where it came from we will never know!

Maybe she goes to Sainsbury's when we are not looking!