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

 

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

There are more old things in Chorlton ….than are dreamt of ……. washing day in Reynard Road*

Now, I am constantly amazed at how so many everyday objects from the past survive.

They may never be used, pose a mystery to some people, and I suspect are endanger of being lost or destroyed, but they hang on as a reminder of how we once lived.

And so today I am sharing Jaime’s copper, which until recently sat  in her cellar in Reynard Road.   

Once they were a common feature, and I have written about them on occasion.**

They would often be built with the house and were a distinct improvement on how clothes had been washed before the 19th century.

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.*** 

But the copper offered up a real advance, in that the washing could be done in doors, and using hot water and commercially produced soap.  That said, heating the water required coal which added to the weekly household bills.   

And because many were sited in the cellar there was the added chore of constantly going up and down a flight of stairs with wet washing , as well as filling and emptying the water from the copper.

There will be a few still tucked away in Chorlton cellars, but perhaps not still in as good condition as is the fireplace beside it.

And one of those nice contrasting touches, beside both these relics of how we used to live is the modern boiler.

Sadly the cooper proved too far gone to be saved, but Jaime commented  "wish I had taken more photos  for you. 

We found the old drying rack down there to. Which I presume would of been in the kitchen. 

There was an old copper “plunger” which I think was used to stir the washing. Love reading your posts Andrew , so happy I can help out".

Now I am fascinated by the copper plunger or posses, but I think the drying rack would have originally been in the cellar, and the clothes left to dry in front of the open fire.

That said we had a version of the drying rack above the sink in the kitchen which in later life always struck me as odd given the smells that permeated the place during cooking.

I had hoped that the plunger might have added one last twist to the story, because it does carry and name, which if it had been that of the manufacturers could have offered up a search for a catalogue and even the location of a show room.

But no, the writing turned out to be the name of the product with it serial number.

So while I will still go looking for the manufacturer of "The Conqueror", number, "671873 or a 8", I don't expect I will be succesful.

Leaving me just to thank Jaime and record that the plunger was not thrown away or sold, but is still with the house, where it belongs, but now has been pressed into a new use as a light.

Location; Chorlton

Pictures; the copper, 2021, from the collection of Jaime Crockcroft-Bailey

* "There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio,

Than are dreamt of in your philosophy". Hamlet Act 1, Scene 5, lines 159–167

**One hundred years of one house in Chorlton part 110 ......... washing day with Mr. Baxendale’s amazing labour saving device, https://chorltonhistory.blogspot.com/2019/07/one-hundred-years-of-one-house-in.html

***The Story of Chorlton-cum-Hardy, Andrew Simpson, 2012