Growing up in New Cross nu 7 ........... memories of when the milk arrived by horse, of dye cast toys and much more

When you are around the past there is always that temptation to slide into nostalgia or worse still to adopt a cynical, hard and sneering approach.

The first sends you tip toeing down picturesque cobbled streets to the strains of a barrel organ and the knowledge that no one locks their doors at night.

The other points up that the cobbles were actually called sets, were often dangerous to both horse and pedestrian while  the barrel organ had a limited repertoire and if people did leave their homes unlocked that was because there was little worth stealing.

It started with a picture of a horse trough near Lausanne Road sparked a series of conversations in our house which went off in different directions and included naturally enough horse drawn vehicles, some of the carrying companies and milk bottles and the cream at the top of the milk.

These are not the memories that summon up the fall of empires or the onset of wars but are as much the stuff of history.

And so I got thinking of the milk vans that delivered our milk in London in the 1950s.  Our round still relied on a horse drawn wagon which however as a consession to the mid 20th century came with big rubber wheels.

It belonged to United Dairies which had been formed in 1917 from a number of smaller companies and by the 1950s had become the UK’s largest dairy products company.

Here as you would expect are a legion of little stories.

Back in the 1920s the United Dairies pioneered the sale of pasteurized milk which had been an issue stretching back to the beginning of the last century.

In 1907 one correspondant to the Manchester Guardian had asked that simple question “Can the present system of milk supply be improved.?”

It was an issue of public safety for what was wanted “is milk which is clean and free from pathogenic germs and which is rich in fat.”

But given the often poor level of scrutiny on the farm and during transportation there was no guarantee of its purity for “milk is a mysterious fluid which tells no tales of its manipulation.”  Moreover it was also at the mercy of “crowds of filthy shops in which milk is exposed side by side with firewood and candles.”

At every stage there was the danger of contamination. “The difficulty on the farm is to secure cleanliness in the milker, the atmosphere, the cooling plant and the churn.  The difficulty in the town dairy is largely in the dust laden atmosphere, which alone shows the need of bottling.  The difficulties in the home are dirty jugs and other vessels in which the milk is exposed until it is required.”

And so not for the first time there had been a call for the involvement of the municipal authorities in the production, supply and provision of milk.

This was after all a period when in the interests of public health local government was getting more and more involved in everything from transport and education to housing, sanitation along with clean drinking water, gas and electric suppilies.

But is was also the age of the train when more and more things were carried by rail of which milk was one.

United Dairies, was a large user of milk trains, and in agreement with the railway companies supplied its own distinctive coloured milk containers to top the railway companies chassis.

While rival Express Dairies preferred the Great Western Railway, United Dairies preferred the Southern Railway.

Those odd looking milk containers were a common enough site on our railways as were the toy versions which appeared on the model railway sets of my youth.

Along with them were those miniature dye cast models of horse carts, motorised floats and the milk lorries.

All were familiar toys when I was young but have pretty much disappeared and are now collectors items, which I suppose has also become the fate of the milkman.

One did pass our house today but they are as much a rarity as the dye cast model.

Here on Beech Road the deliveries lingered on till the turn of the century, but you got that sense that like the rag and bone man and the knife grinder their day was numbered.


Now they are as much a memory as the local dairy on Brookburn Road or the horse drawn milk float which is just about where I started.

Pictures; United Dairies 6 wheel milk tank originally a British Railway Milk Tank Waggon now part of the rolling stock of the Bluebell Railway,  August 2007, by Bluebellnutter, other images from the internet source unknown

*James Long, Municipal Milk, Manchester Guardian, November 20th, 1907