Washing at Mayfield ……….. the story that won’t go away

Now yesterday I was reflecting on the discovery of the Mayfield Baths which were opened in 1857, enlarged in the 1920s and destroyed in an air raid during the last world war.*

Uncovering the Mayfield Baths, 2020

I always knew I would be returning to the story, but didn’t expect it would be the following day.

However, that changed when Richard Hector-Jones posted this picture with the comment “I was working at Mayfield Depot across the way before Christmas when the diggers uncovered this. Absolutely remarkable”.

And as you do I decided to go back into the records of the Manchester & Salford Baths and Laundries Company which built the Mayfield establishment along with others in Salford, Hulme and Victoria Park.  It had a short life, having been formed in 1855, it sold all its assets  to Manchester Corporation in 1877.

In an age when for many State intervention was still to be mistrusted it fell on charities and organizations like the Manchester & Salford Baths and Laundries Company to plug the gap.

And while there is no disguising the fact that the Baths offered the shareholders a return on their investment, the motivation was in part driven by philanthropy.

Today we might view that “desire to do good” with a degree of cynicism, given that some of the wealth held by these benefactors had been made from enterprises which exploited sections of the working population.

But as the chairman of the baths reaffirmed in a speech in 1856, “Their great object in establishing the baths was not so much to get a dividend as for the purpose of benefitting the working classes”**

Adding that the Manchester baths were better run and “paying better than any other public baths in the Kingdom”

Tomorrow; the mechanics and advantages of washing your clothes on the wash house.

Location; Manchester and Salford

Picture; Mayfield Baths excavations, December 2020, from the collection of Richard Hector-Jones

*What was lost is found .... the forgotten Manchester Baths in Mayfield, https://chorltonhistory.blogspot.com/2021/01/what-was-lost-is-found-forgotten.html

** Manchester & Salford Baths and Laundries Company, Manchester Guardian, March 3, 1865