If it’s Monday …… it’s washing day ……. keeping Chorlton clean in 1851

Of course, I doubt people still stick to set days for set tasks, and the arrival of the washing machine has made any day wash day.

Washing day, Chorlton, 2021

Back in the 1850s it was very different.

Here in Chorlton, many married working women washed other peoples’ clothes, either by attending at the customer’s house or washing them at home. *  

In 1851 there were 23 of them and most were married with some of the younger ones working alongside their mothers.  They were by and large concentrated along the Row, up by Lane End and in a cluster by the Royal Oak in Renshaws Buildings. **  

Ceylon, 1944

Before the widespread use of hot water and soap, the traditional way of washing clothes was by using cold water and homemade alkalis to dissolve the grease. For centuries wood ash was the most common material for dissolving grease.  

The real work came after soaking the clothes in the solution of water and wood ash and involved forcing water through the fibres using a wooden bat.  At its simplest this was just a matter of hitting the clothes with the bat before wringing out the water using a wringing post set in the ground.  

The clothes were wrapped around the post and by degree the clothes were wrung dry.  Here in the township there were ready supplies of water but not that close for our washer women up by Renshaw’s Buildings who relied on nearby wells.  Some however would have been employed by the wealthier members of the township to come to the house and do the washing there.

Pictures; washing day in Chorlton, 2021, from the collection of Andrew Simpson and Ceylon, 1944 from the collection of Bob Ward

Adapted from The Story of Chorlton-cum-Hardy, Simpson Andrew, 2012, https://chorltonhistory.blogspot.com/search/label/A%20new%20book%20for%20Chorlton

*Thompson, Flora, Candleford Green 1943,  from Lark Rise to Candleford, Penguin Classics, London,  2000 Pages 494-495 Miss Lane employed a professional washerwoman for two days every six weeks, arriving at 6 in the morning

** The Row is now Beech Road, Lane End is where High Lane, and what was Barlow Moor Lane and Sandy Lane meet, and Renshaw’s Cottages are on the site of the present Royal Oak