Who remembers having a "Scullery" in their house, usually tucked away off the small cooking kitchen, this was where dishes and clothes would be washed.
Featuring a stone earthenware sink or slab that you would pre wash the clothes in then rinse them clear. Most early sinks would only have had a cold tap.
Usually using pink carbolic or green or yellow sunlight soap.
Oh the smell !!
Then transfer the clothes to the galvanised washtub already filled with water heated in a copper boiler. You would then use a Posser or Dolly, it had a large handle and wooden fingers to clean the clothes. You would turn the handle left and right repeatedly to move the clothes back and forth in the water like in an agitator washing machine.
You would use Sunlight Soap Flakes in the washtub to clean the clothes.
Here`s the washtub and wooden airer to dry the clothes on in front of the kitchen range.
And glass washboard with wooden posser.
Once scrubbed, washed and rinsed you then pass the clothes through the big wooden mangle, usually this was in the yard outdoors, often the kids would be turning the big metal wheel while mum or gran fed the clothes through the wooden rollers to squeeze out the water.
All that was left to do was then hand the clothes on the washing line with the wooden clothes pegs.
And in the pantry is a lovely selection of soaps from bygone times, Which do you remember ?
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