Travels with my ironing board …. in two countries over six decades

When the history of domestic ironing is written due consideration should be given not only to the historic location, and source of power but also to that abomination which was the drip-dry shirt.

Where ever I put my ironing board, 2023

I can speak with authority, given that I am old enough to remember grandmother using that pre-electrical iron, which was heavy, required at least two so that as one was being used the other sat heating up. 

Hoovermatic poster, circa mid 1960s

I know that very early on some irons were designed to take hot coal or charcoal, and that tailors and in large homes there were specially designed ironing stoves which would take a number or irons in racks.

The hidden trick was to make sure these irons stayed clean given their proximity to dirty fuel.

Go back further in time and there were paddles, presses, box mangles and rolling pins all designed to take away the wrinkles.

By the time I was growing up in the 1950s some of that drudgery had been banished in our house, with mum acquiring a range of different washing machines from the simple hot tub powered by electricity, to the “Service” rotating machine with powered mangle.

Iron power from the ceiling, circa 1950s

This later device was the bees’ knees of washing day but still required mum to hand fill it with water and empty it.  Only in the mid-1960s did we get the Hoovermatic programmed washing machine.  

As for the ironing, mum was also up there with technology and had an electric iron, but this was the 1950s, and we lived in a house which was already eighty years old and built before domestic electricity with just a handful of power points.

So, like most homes, mum powered the iron and other devices with an adapter which fitted into a light fitting in the ceiling.

Simple, effective and maybe by today’s standards a tad scarry.

An iron with a view, 2022

But it all worked.

And with that same pragmatism, I adopted the practice of ironing in the garden during the summer months, which was not only pleasant but had the added bonus of giving me a suntan without ever having to buy travellers cheques or jet off to somewhere hot.

A little earlier in the mid 1960s I had flirted with the bri nylon drip dry shirts.

They dried quickly, needed no ironing and hung from the drying rack suspended from the ceiling in the kitchen.  It was the perfect solution, which involved a quick rinse in the washing up bowl, and then was left to drip happily dry all night into the sink.

The downside was that sometimes they smelt of the cooking, quickly stained under the arm pits and got warm in hot weather, added to which they were a butt of classroom humour.

I have to confess I now no longer do the ironing in the sun, and have long since given up “doing underwear”, and as l plough through a pile of  stuff gazing out of the window listening to Radio 4, I am reminded of at least one ironing holiday in Sardinia, accompanied by wild boar but that’s for another time.

Silhouette with ironing board, 2017

Suffice to say we did import our wooden ironing board from Italy where half the family live and who would never entertain a metal one.

Such is one-upmanship in the world of ironing.

Location. a time and place before now

Pictures; Six decades of ironing, 1955-2022, from the collection of Andrew Simpson