BBC - Radio 4 - Woman's Hour -Larders

Pat McLean

When I moved in 1957 to the East Midlands and a coal mining town, the kitchen in our modern rented house had a deep cupboard (the pantry) complete with a thick stone shelf (the thrall). When we moved to our newly built semi it had a similar cupboard. Bottles of milk, delivered early in the morning, sat in a container on the stone floor and rarely went sour. Milk junket and jellies set quickly and a Walls block of Neapolitan ice-cream could be bought from the van, wrapped in several thicknesses of newspaper and be fine for tea, kept on that shelf. I recall the pantry had a large air-brick in the wall to the outside, with a metal mesh to keep out insects.

My children thought everyone only had their icecream for tea, until they went to school. But in those days, like most people in towns, we had an assortment of shops selling the necessities of life less than ten minutes walk away.

Red Squirrel

When we moved into our Edinburgh house in 1957, the kitchen had a coal-fired aga which also supplied hot water. There was no other means of cooking, and I still don't know how my mother managed, because the aga was very temperamental, and Christmas was always a nightmare! The aga, plus three other coke roomheaters, had to be filled and raked out twice a day. My mother used to say she moved a ton of phurnacite (and the ashes) every three weeks! I never ever saw my father lift a hod of coal or a pan of ash in the 13 years we were there.

There was no sink in the kitchen. Instead, there was a belfast sink in the adjoining pantry with three 'bib' taps sticking out of the wall above. All the pans and plates had to be carried from the aga and back around the middle wall--my mother must have walked for miles.

My mother got her fridge in 1960, so I expect she did much as you did, to keep things cool. Ice-cream was a real treat! Food for the day was bought daily, and I don't suppose anything was wasted. The trademen also delivered daily---seems unbelievable now.

The scullery was the coldest place on earth, I think, and had two enormous sinks for clothes-washing, as well as the coal-store and a horrid little WC(unchanged since 1890) which the maid would have used, her bedroom being above the scullery. (Not that we had a maid!)

Mum got her Bendix also in 1960 and it was so heavy that it had to be bolted to the floor. I heard that the people after us had great problems removing it!

Retired? Downsizing? Moving home to be nearer the kids?