mangle – derrickjknight

A Knight’s Tale (20: No Mod Cons)

On a visit to The Priest’s House Museum at Wimborne in November 2013 I entered the Victorian kitchen, laid out with all its accoutrements, complete with an elderly woman with a shawl round her shoulders and a book in her hands before a lighted kitchen range.

This truly was an authentic tableau, with just one figure of the period in situ. Then she spoke. I laughed wholeheartedly, and said I had thought she was a model. She told me that a small boy earlier had thought the same thing, and had been most surprised when she greeted him.

This was Margery Ryan who was clearly one of the museum’s volunteers, and a wealth of information, including that of the children’s activities. They were encouraged to make toast with one of the toasting forks hanging beside the kitchen range, just as I and my siblings had done by an open fire in our sitting room at Stanton Road. I remembered how, on a coal fire, you had to take your hand away every now and again because it got pretty hot. There were no electric toasters.

The range in this photograph is exactly the same as the one we used throughout my childhood. Although a gas cooker came later, Mum would have heated a kettle like that on this stove. She had no electric iron in 1944. An iron one was also heated on the stove and, a protective cloth wrapped around the handle, applied to the family washing she had undertaken by hand, using bowls, soap, scrubbing brush, and tub, such as those in this picture of a mangle into which

sheets, in particular, were placed between two rollers, and you turned a handle in order to squeeze and therefore rinse them. One day when we were very small Chris left his finger in as I turned the handle. Fortunately his bones must have still been soft enough to be re-inflated.

I have no idea how Mum dried our clothes when it was too wet to hang them out on the washing line in the garden. There was, of course, neither washing machine nor drier.

Mum was most inventive with very limited resources.

This photograph depicts the first trio of our parents’ offspring, namely me, Chris, and Jacqueline, taken, I imagine, in the summer of 1948, probably in Durham, and if so by our grandfather. We were very proud of those Fair Isle jumpers which were all the rage then, and continue to be made today. I don’t think they were available at that time from outlets such as Laura Ashley. They were, and still are, hand-knitted in the island in northern Scotland from which they take their name. The genuine article is no longer generally available for sale, the market having been swallowed by mass production. Their geometric patterns remain popular.

Ours were not from the Fair Isle. They were, like all our other clothes, made by our mother. A couple of years later, my grandmother taught me to knit. I made endless scarves. When I say endless, this is a literal statement. They had no endings because I didn’t know how to cast off and had to wait for Grandma Hunter to be in the mood to do it for me. They had usually got a bit straggly by then, and it wasn’t good for her temper.

I was, however, fascinated by the making of the patterns and progressed to designing, on squared paper, images for Mum to knit.

This, as far as I remember, involved different symbols for different stitches, with the use of appropriate colours. Joseph was to follow me in this, and I believe a Goofy design that Mum reproduced on a jumper for several family members was drawn on graph paper by him not so very long ago. He obviously shared his brother’s interest in going beyond the geometric.

My own early masterpieces, long before anyone thought of recycling, have most likely wound up in some landfill somewhere.

Alternatively, if, like Mum’s dressmaking patterns, cut into squares and threaded on a string, the material was thin enough to be used for toilet paper, they could have come in handy in the loo.

Our bedrooms, there being no central heating, and coal expensive, were unheated. This could become nose-tinglingly cold with icy sheets, especially if you had wet them. The beauty of it, however, was that you could wake in the morning to frost patterns,

like this from our car windscreen in January 2017, on the inside of your windows.

Dishes were washed and dried by hand.

There was no fridge. The hot summer of 1947 was particularly problematic in keeping milk and butter from going off. Bottles of milk were kept in cold water in the kitchen sink. Butter simply became runny.

I couldn’t bear that, so I would only eat Echo margarine, the single oily spread that was at all impervious to the heat. This, of course, is really only fit for cooking, and no way would I consider it today.

Many of today’s children carry their own mobile devices with which they may make and receive telephone calls; send and receive texts or e-mails; watch films; and goodness knows what else may be possible by the time this tale is published. Imagine an era, if you can, in which most people didn’t have a telephone in their home, and if they did it was rented from the Post Office, attached to a cable embedded in the wall, on a line shared with neighbours who, if so inclined, could listen in to each other’s conversation.

Personal Computers had not even been thought about.

Our family never had a telephone. I was eighteen when I first used one at work. It scared the life out of me every time it rang.

Although Dad was a driver in the Army we never had a car. Neither did others in our street.

Most people had no television, and those on the market possessed very small screens in grainy black and white, often with stripes rolling up and down the picture. They usually only worked if the aerial was in the correct position to receive the signal, often held in someone’s hand. If there was no available aeriaI a coat hanger would do. I was fifteen when my parents were first given a second-hand set.

Potting Up

The usual division of labour was employed in further tidying of the garden this much duller morning.

This afternoon while Jackie plundered the garden centres, I extracted some text from ‘She Saw The R100’ from ‘The Workhouse’ and from ‘And Then The Tableau Spoke’ for the next pages of ‘A Knight’s Tale’.

These two photographs from the second of these posts

and this one from ‘A Wolf In Sheep’s Clothing’ were also included.

The Head Gardener returned from her expedition with numerous trays of flowering plants

with which to fill her vast quantity of hanging baskets and other containers. The process involves filling the pots with suitable fresh potting compost, which is transferred to the garden beds the following spring, when the annuals are over; plants are then selected for colour combinations, shape, and whether or not they are trailing; they are then pressed into the soil, and

this is the result.

Two of these were made. They now hang either side of the French windows.

This evening we dined at The Crown Inn at Everton. The food and service was excellent. For starters I chose leek and potato soup served with wholemeal bread, while Jackie enjoyed brochette served on a beetroot salad.. My main course was fillet steak cooked to perfection, chips, peas, mushrooms, tomato, and onion rings; Jackie’s was chicken in white wine and tarragon sauce, sautéed potatoes and mixed vegetables. I drank Delcoeur vin de l’Hérault and Jackie drank water.

Happy Hunting

CLICK ON IMAGES TO ENLARGE. THOSE IN GROUPS ACCESS GALLERIES THAT CAN BE VIEWED FULL SIZE.

Those who have read posts from April 2014 onwards will know that we moved into a house that had suffered from much bodged D.I.Y. We are only putting this right at a very slow pace.

Here is our badly painted crooked mantelpiece made from a bit of wood trimmed with beading. Note the gaps behind the tiles stuck onto the walls, and that between the shelf and the wall.

We can’t stand it any more, so we travelled to Ace Reclamation in West Parley to investigate surrounds created from reclaimed timber. We are now to submit a measured drawing to have one made for us.

Our morning was spent in heavy rain. Here is the entrance to the architectural salvage outlet. The staff member waving in the distance is acknowledging the postwoman who has just delivered the mail to

Ace Reclaim letter box through wet windscreen

an old postbox which serves as Ace Reclamation’s letterbox. This is what that looked like through our car windscreen.

Readers can already imagine that I wasn’t about to make a complete inventory in the rain, however I did what I could. This yard is a wonderful repository of artefacts and materials. There are garden ornaments and furniture galore, some of which, on past visits, has found its way to Downton. Figures in stone and bronze, a giant cockerel, carriage lamps, urns, tiles, timber, rust, telephone boxes, a suit of armour, a mangle, a garden roller, gargoyles, can all be found therein. You could enjoy happy hunting in reality, or, if you’d prefer to stay dry, virtually, through searching through these photographs.

The wooded areas on either side of the long, unmade, road, the potholes in which give a whole new meaning to the phrase ‘off the beaten track’, are waterlogged.

The ditches are filling up fast,

and flooding a paddock,

in which stood three damp horses, two of which were a sandy colour I have not seen before.

Mind you, the gorse glowed a grateful golden yellow.

On our way home we visited Friar’s Cliff Café for brunch. There was just one other customer couple who had braved the blustery seafront to reach the comfort always available there.

This was the sea through the rain-splashed window.

Anyone who has seen a photograph of a Friar’s Cliff Café breakfast will not be surprised to learn that a selection of small Asian snacks, such as samosas and spring rolls, more than satisfied us for our evening meal with which jackie drank Hoegaarden and I finished the Cahors.

Then The Tableau Spoke

Taking more advantage of these glorious autumn days, we drove this morning to Wimborne to visit The Priest’s House Museum and wander around the little town, including the Minster itself.

Somewhat surrounded by its environment, it is difficult to find a complete, unobstructed, view of the Minster, the greater part of which was built in the twelfth century. From wherever you are in the town, however; for example in the garden of the museum, or the car park nearby; at least one of its two towers is visible.

The splendid building is beautifully lit by its numerous stained glass windows, which set the very walls aglow.

The sheer scope of the stonework of the walls and windows is awe-inspiring, yet there is a lightness of touch that lifts the spirit.

A niche in one of the internal walls contains the coffin of Anthony Et(t)ricke. A notice informs us that this clearly eccentric gentleman was convinced he would die in 1693 and had his intended coffin inscribed accordingly. In the event, he lived for another ten years, and when the time came to lay him to rest a rather unsuccessful attempt to change the date of decease to 1703 was made.

High up outside a window in one of the towers stands the Quarter Jack, now a symbol of Wimborne. He has for centuries stood watching over the town, and still, as he did for us waiting at 2.00 p.m., strikes his flanking bells with his hammers.

The visit to the Minster came after we had lunched in the cafe in the garden of The Priest’s House Museum after an enjoyable tour of that establishment. Another in a growing number of local history museums we have visited, this one is imaginatively conceived and executed, having both permanent displays and particular periodic exhibitions. It is, as we were to learn, a thriving activity centre for children who are encouraged to hunt for objects in the house and grounds, and to engage in activities, such as cooking on the kitchen range, that were undertaken in days gone by.

There are various rooms on the first floor, housing cabinets containing artefacts relevant to the history of East Dorset. First of all, on the ground floor, there are rooms dedicated to tableaux, such as Mrs King’s parlour, where Elizabeth, a mercer’s widow is seen discussing building plans with John Mitchell, her master plumber, who is known to have worked on the site in the eighteenth century.

The schoolroom was fascinating. The cane hanging over the blackboard was an authentic touch. Today’s date, in fine copper plate handwriting, was inscribed on the blackboard. The plastic pencil container on the teacher’s desk was perhaps an aberration. What fascinated me was the pairs of desks, which enthralled two small children who, having visited earlier in the week, had brought their parents back for a second visit. Their eyes opened wide when I told them I had sat beside Maureen Potter in one of those very same desks when I had been a little boy.

Moving on from this conversation, I entered the Victorian kitchen, laid out with all its accoutrements, complete with an elderly woman with a shawl round her shoulders and a book in her hands before a lighted kitchen range. This truly was an authentic tableau, with just one figure of the period in situ. Then she spoke. I laughed wholeheartedly, and said I had thought she was a model. She told me that a small boy earlier had thought the same thing, and had been most surprised when she greeted him.

This was Margery Ryan who was clearly one of the volunteers, and a wealth of information, including that of the children’s activities. They were encouraged to make toast with one of the toasting forks hanging beside the kitchen range, just as I and my siblings had done by an open fire in our sitting room at Stanton Road. I remembered how, on a coal fire, you had to take your hand away every now and again because it got pretty hot.

We spoke for a long time, before and after we were joined by Jackie. Margery, contemporary with our friend Margery Clarke, was proud of the fact that her name was spelt the proper way.

Perhaps the greatest surprise to me was the sight of the very mangle in which I had trapped Chris’s finger when we were very small. I swear it was the same one. How it had made its way there I’ll never know.

Having finally torn myself away from Margery, I ventured upstairs. There was much to intrigue in the cabinets. It is strange to see everyday objects from your own lifetime consigned to museum cabinets. For example in the childhood room, side by side, lay the roller skates and skipping rope of the 1940s. Many a knee had I barked on the pavements of Stanton Road whilst trying to keep upright on my Ashby adjustable rollers; and we boys joined in all the girls’ skipping games and contests about who could do the most skips without tripping up.

The 15th February 1971 was decimal day. This was when the pounds, shillings, and pence of our sterling currency made way for the coinage we have today. Overnight we had to learn that 244 pennies no longer made £1, for that was now divided into 100p. Interestingly we still use the old sterling symbol, £, for pound, but a penny is a p, not a d, the previous Latin abbreviation. So it was fun to see a wallet in the gents’ costume gallery revealing £1 and 10 shilling notes. The largest of the coins resting on the open wallet was half a crown, eight of which made £1. This was quite a lot of money for a small boy. Especially one who bit his nails. Half a crown was the reward Auntie Gwen offered me to stop biting mine. I earned it. Then I bit them again. Then I earned it again. I think I tumbled to the idea of this being a good wheeze before my godmother did and that particular source of extra pocket money dried up.

We vowed to return, especially as one admission ticket is good for a year’s season ticket, to see the long narrow garden in its prime. Apart from an interesting array of shrubs and flowers, it contains heritage apple and pear trees.

From the Minster we finally returned home. The lowering sun made even the A31 look delightful, and we took the Ocknell turn off so we could watch the last rays lighting up Stoney Cross Plain.

A small Shetland type pony turned its head disdainfully as two of its cousins demeaned themselves by forming the backdrop to a visitor’s photograph.

After a full day we tried out the Family House Chinese restaurant in Totton. The ambiance was homely, greeting warm and welcoming, the service friendly and efficient, and the food good. We both drank Tsingtao beer. We will go there again.

The Workhouse

We enjoyed another beautifully balmy Indian summer day for our trip to Christchurch’s Red House Museum.

Operated by volunteers there are sections devoted to learning about The Victorians and the twentieth century; and archeological finds going back to neolithic times. A small garden is as informative as the rooms inside. In particular we are told the benefits provided by various plants to the ecology. There is a plentifully stocked herb garden and another for roses.

The teenage tyrant Noah Claypole, in Charles Dickens’s ‘Oliver Twist’, named the eponymous hero ‘Work’us’, because the boy had spent his first nine years in a workhouse. Oliver would no doubt have recognised this 1764 Georgian building in its original incarnation, for it was built as a workhouse:

The separate women’s section of this building is no longer in existence. The rose garden is planted where it stood. Some of the roses were still in bloom this afternoon, as were a fine crop of nerines.

A fly basked on a catalpa leaf. Perhaps it had just checked out of the bug hotel in the woodland walk..

Elsewhere in the garden one or two cartwheels that have seen better days are distributed for rustic effect.

As one wanders from room to room of this imaginatively laid out, not terribly extensive, town garden, various glimpses of the Priory Church can be had through the sometimes decorative foliage.

A small figure of St Francis of Assisi stands in a niche in the rear entrance archway.

Once inside, we were warmly welcomed; informed, as I took out my wallet, that the tour was free; and given a brief explanation of the layout. Donations were invited, but not until we had been satisfied.

The Meet the Victorians exhibition uses modern materials and artwork to take us through different aspects of the life of that era. Original objects are on display with a timeline of a typical workhouse day.

Arthur Romney Green was a local craftsman making furniture in the 1930s. The 1935 room contains model figures with real pieces of his work in a setting typical of the time. I imagine this family were better off than many. Note the Clarice Cliff tea set.

One can only make a selection of the artefacts and other items on display. I have chosen one or two that have some meaning for me.

Being confronted by the huge box mangle I experienced a sense of relief that it hadn’t been in our mother’s kitchen when I experimented on Chris’s finger. When we were very young Mum had no washing machine, and so washed everything by hand. She did, however, have a wooden mangle. Sheets, in particular, were placed between two rollers, and you turned a handle in order to squeeze and therefore rinse them. One day Chris left his finger in as I turned the handle. Fortunately his bones must have been still soft enough to be re-inflated. The museum exhibit looked a bit more heavy duty than our version.

The model tram on a window sill reminded me of those I travelled on as a child down Wimbledon Broadway. After trams and trolleybuses, it was the Routemaster, a model of one of which lay in a cabinet, that became London Transport’s bus of choice from 1954 until the last one was taken out of service in 2005. In our more safety-conscious age, it is no longer considered appropriate to have an open doorway, from which the tardy or the daring can jump on or off a public service vehicle. I discovered that you can still hire out a Routemaster for special events on 31st August, when Anne’s car was blocked in by a pair of them that had been hired for a wedding party.

It is probably well known that one task given to adult workhouse residents was the very painful one of picking oakum. Much smaller, more flexible, fingers were needed to make fusee chains for clocks and watches. Young girls had that job. Most of them consequently suffered from damaged eyesight.

A neighbouring case to the one that held the chain contained early writing implements. The steel-nibbed pens reminded me of those with which I had learned to write at primary school. Desks had notches for ink wells into which we dipped our pens. One summer I injured my right hand. I don’t remember how, but I most certainly do remember being made to write with my left hand until the other one recovered. I am of course not alone in having, during that era, had to go through that particular form of educational torture. Nor of the others mentioned on 1st November last year, when I attempted to entertain with tales of my primary school years.

The Southwell Workhouse museum is in stark contrast to the one we visited today. Opened by the National Trust earlier this century, it is the most complete workhouse in existence. The buildings and exercise yards are intact and, with one exception, completely bare and unfurnished. Visitors are given a dramatised audio commentary with which to absorb the ambience of the housing of the poor in times gone by. It is very effective. The exception is the floor that was used as a women’s refuge in the 1970s. That is furnished as it was then with objects that had been provided by various charities, and largely consisted of other people’s cast offs. I well remember an identical kitchen cabinet with a drop-down shelf to that that had been my mother’s pride and joy in the 1950s.

The rows of cast iron single bedsteads were rather depressing, especially when reflecting on why the residents lived there.

Fish and chips, mushy peas, and Stelle d’Italia Prosecco provided our evening sustenance.