Friday 13 January 2012

No more will I sit in the Soap Opera.............. a lament for another lost way of life

If you have ever lived in a bed sit most probably you will also have sat and washed your clothes in the launderette. For me the two go together.

Being single and on a low income meant my early years in Manchester were spent in one room in converted Victorian houses which were sad neglected and shabby versions of their former selves.
If you were lucky the landlord would have redecorated the walls with wood chip and some neutral colour of emulsion, although in my case in one flat the original paper had just had an amateur coat of some watered down paint thrown over it.

And the delights of such living just went on. You shared the bathroom which was seldom cleaned, the whole house was always cold with a hint of damp and the hall always seemed full of junk mail and letters to residents who even the landlord had forgotten

So in the absence of a washing machine you went to the launderette. They could be a meeting place but all too often in my student days the place was empty and you washed alone, watching as the soap suds took over the porthole of a window which only confirmed you had used too much powder again.

But I am being a bit unfair. Launderettes were on every high street and back road from the 50s onwards and in their way I suppose were part of that bright new post war future. No more sending the dirty clothes to the laundry now you could do it yourself with no fear that the stained underwear and socks with holes in would be the topic of conversations for the whole laundry over the tea break.


Nor did you have to brave the municipal laundry which was fine if you were the adult but all so boring for a child of seven. These council run public laundries were a marvellous asset for anyone living in small terraced house where wash day could take over the whole house. Moreover they were a place to meet and talk. But again not if you were seven and had plans to play in the park.

Now all of this is because the launderette on Beech Road has closed. The last wash was just before Christmas and now the Soap Opera is no more. It has joined thousands of others who could not compete with cheap washing machines and an attitude which preferred that clothes should be washed in the privacy of one’s home. And that too chimes in with the trend for each member of the family to occupy them elves in a different room doing different things.

So from a peak of twelve and half thousand outlets there are now fewer than 3,000. I remember talking about the demise of laundries with my friend Lawrence who had been told by the owner of a launderette that they would go the same way in the next decade. I should have seen it coming. First the one on Barlow Moor Road went and now ours on Beech Road.



The Soap Opera had been the Maypole and must have seemed so thoroughly modern when it opened four decades ago but now no more.
All of which leaves me with one thought, where will the bed sit residents go now to wash their clothes?

Picture; Miles Platting Public Wash House 1950, m57371 Courtesy of Manchester Libraries, Information and Archives, Manchester City Council and
The Soap Opera on a sunny day on Beech Road from the collection of Andrew Simpson

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