washday

The open windows spilled out their buzz, and with it came the sweetish, soapy smell of big washdays. The old swing groaned out its melancholy music.

No one in the community had running water and families had to bring four or five three-gallon aluminum buckets of water each day from a community well, and more on washdays. The well was often a quarter of a kilometre or more from the homes and the buckets were filled twice daily, necessitating a kilometre walk each day for water.

Elsewhere on the home front, visitors will be able to find out about washdays and growing your own food, while a 1914-18 police constable will be on duty to talk about law and order.

Ajax detergent introduced the white knight galloping through washdays for the cleanest, whitest wash.

I recall my grandmother doing all her washing by hand in a cellar in her house where the huge white sink, copper boiler (which had to have a fire lit under it before proceeding) and a mangle which weighed like a bus (originally made for servants) were her entire company on traditional Monday washdays.

"Inside I remember the cockroaches in the pantry and the silverfish on the damp walls and mother cutting the block of fairy soap on washdays - but there was no washing machine.

In the early post-war years of the mid to late 1940s, it was still open fires downstairs and often upstairs; kitchen ranges; large gas boilers, with possers in the scullery for washdays. There were five children at the Boltons', so June Allyson's arrival was very welcome.

From coalmines to pastimes, washdays to paydays, discover life for a Victorian miner's family.

I use cotton covered nylon clothesline and find that four 30-foot-long lines is enough for most of my washdays. I wash 14 loads of laundry a week!

But when the talk turns to washdays, she shakes her head and grows silent.