Domestic Memories
Claire Neville, Betty Pearce, Margaret Sell and Pat Wright
Domestic Water - not really a convenience
Claire Neville
‘bucket and chuck it’ toilet,
Our water supply in the 1940s was a single cold water tap, or the nearest pump. The only other ‘convenience’ was a ‘bucket and chuck it’ toilet, housed in a wooden shed in the garden. The contents of this had to be buried in holes in the garden. Baths were taken once a week in a tin bath, filled with saucepans full of hot water, and the youngest in the family went in first. The water had to be emptied into the nearest ditch as there was no main drainage. On washday water had to be fetched to fill the copper,
Carrying home water from the Chapel Orchard well in the 1940s
under which a fire was lit, and the clothes and sheets were poked and stirred with a long wooden copper stick as they bubbled away in the hot water. After rinsing, the washing was squeezed through the wooden rollers of a huge old iron mangle.
Food Storage
difficult to keep food fresh
Betty Pearce
We shopped for food every day as it was difficult to keep food fresh before the days of electric refrigerators. Our parents told of keeping butter and milk fresh by wrapping the containers in muslin and packing them tightly together in holes in the garden.
Meat Preservation
ham was smoked in the big chimneys of the old cottages.
Margaret Sell
Meat was kept outside in a cool spot inside a meat safe, eggs were preserved in isinglass when in short supply, and marvellous ham was smoked in the big chimneys of the old cottages.
Home Life
Pat Wright
Low ceilings and oil lamps combined to give warmth and a lovely,
homes, always smelt of paraffin
soft light in our homes, but our clothes, and our homes, always smelt of paraffin and other homely smells such as woodsmoke, pipe tobacco, baking and onions.