 |  | | | Cooking, Cleaning and Household Chores | There are 6 messages in this section. |
Ian Douglas from Glasgow . Posted 10 Mar 2002.
The house in which I was brought up will be known to many who live in the West of Scotland. It was the big house in the Botanic Gardens that is now a visitor centre, offices and a flat. In my time it was all one big house, which did not have electricity. Let me take you on a tour... We always used the back door, which after a short corridor entered the washhouse/scullery. This room had a concrete floor sloping to a drain in the centre of the floor, in a corner was the wash boiler, this was brick built with an iron liner and heated by coal. The dirty clothes were placed in the boiler, cold water added from a tap above it and the fire set. When the water was hot the clothes were pummelled with a wooden pole to agitate them. When the washing was clean the clothes were lifted using the pole into the large deep wally sink next to the boiler and they were rinsed. Drying was started with a mangle which had two large wooden rollers and a handle on a big gear wheel. After this the washing was put on the line outside to dry or hung on the pulley in the Kitchen.
The Kitchen was a large room with a scrubbed wooden table in the centre, on the wall dividing the kitchen from the washhouse was the range, this of course was black iron and kept polished. A large heavy iron kettle always sat at the side full of nearly boiling water. The range was the sole source of heat in the house unless a fire was set in another room, which was rare. At the opposite side of the room to the range was a large walk in cupboard ventilated to the outside with a fine zinc mesh, this is where meat, milk and perishables were kept. Mum did the ironing between the range and the window using two flat irons, using one while the other was heating on the range. There actually was a gas iron but Mum never could get it to work satisfactorily. The house except for the kitchen was cold, but we did not know any better and just put on more clothes, a hot water bottle in the bed solved cold bedrooms.
We were never short of food, probably because Dad was very good at trapping rabbit; we grew our own vegetables and made our own butter in Kilner jars, constantly turning the jar until butter formed from the cream. I can remember the big treat at Christmas when we got chicken. One day Glasgow Corporation decided to give us electricity, it was probably about 1952, the only thing we used it for was light as we had no appliances, and we learned that a house with electric light is a much colder house that a house with gas lights.
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|  | Janette Lupton. Posted 18 Mar 2002.
Washing day in the 1940s was always a chore for my sister and I. Before we went to school we had to carry the water 200 yards uphill to the boiler which had a fire lit under it. My sister and I carried a bath full of water between us while carrying a pail of water in our other hand. This had to be done three or four times each morning. Where the path narrowed we had to walk single file, with the result that the one lower on the path usually got their shoes filled with water We lived in a row of houses with no running water and the boiler was allocated to a different house each day. As three of our neighbours had no children we carried the water each morning for them. This we had done from an early age. We all worked together in those days helping each other.
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| | Sheila Howie. Posted 12 Apr 2002.
I lived out in the country, and will always remember the times we had to have the 'tilly lamps' ready to light, it was a family ritual every night. We had to cover the windows with the black tar paper blinds, before we could put a light on in the house then, at bedtime, we used a candlelight to get ready for bed. If you were caught with a light on the house, without the blinds, the factor of the property could, and would, evict the guilty party.
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| | Jennifer Steele. Posted 19 Sep 2002.
Is there any way I can find out about proteins, carbohydrates, fats and oils, fibre?
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| | James Robertson. Posted 17 Oct 2002.
The guy said that they got electity in his house in 1952, we got it in our house in 1934 or 5- thats nearly 20yrs differnce. I don't understand that.
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| | Ian Douglas from Glasgow, now Ayr. Posted 22 Apr 2003.
The house was and is physically a long way from the electricity supply. It was a matter of economics shortly after the war. The cable was run from a point adjacent to the police call box at the left of the park gates, up the main drive to the house. This is a long cable run to serve just two houses. After the electricity was connected we got bad interference on the (battery) wireless when the light on the top of the police box was flashing to alert a policeman. A loud buzz when the light was on.
Don't forget we had no use for electricity as we had no appliances, gas lighting worked and worked well. We did not have fitted carpets, floors were varnished and had rugs which were hung on the line and whacked to clean them.
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