Tony Wilson’s Laundry Memories

When I was three-ish we moved from Levenshulme at the bomb flattened heart of Manchester to a riverside cottage with an iron kitchen table to shelter under and a small garden sloping down to the prone to flood Black Beck.
The privy was down the garden, with a bucket that could be tipped (as I recall) on certain days according to river flow and estuary tide.

Similarly, on certain days clothes washing could be done directly in the stream or via bucket heated on the coal fired stove. I recall Reckitt’s Blue and coal tar soap.

On good days people could fish and wade or stand under a fall of crystal clear mountain water. My job, not connected, on the call; “get your bucket and spade boy,” was to scoop precious horse dung from the road to feed our garden. Happy days.
1942ish The Green, Millom Without, Cumberland (now Cumbria)

Moving from a rented basement flat in Clifton to a semi detached three bed house in Southmead with Garage and good sized garden.
With my Jamaican wife and two small golden hued children we were a little baffled to be greeted with a brand new free standing galvanised boiler, a rippled washboard and a mangle.

“Thank you Bristol City Council but we can’t use that stuff; we’ll cope at the laundrette then buy a washing machine.”

Whew! How times and people change! My mam would have thought us “right soft.”
1965ish Southmead estate Bristol