Washday Blues
By Laura Orchard
A display of nostalgic washing utensils carefully printed onto a white cotton sheet. The imagery works perfectly and may conjure to some a row of billowing sheets, like sails, against a clear blue sky.
But the washing lines were at close quarters, as were the people, and the skies were rarely clear. The jostling rows of white, and not so white, resulted from hours of toil and tears.
The relentless demand for ‘smooth and clean’, a perfection still chased today, caused fingers to become red and rough, the skin to split and crack. Steaming cotton and searing black iron will quickly take their toll on even the strongest of hands.
The soaps were harsh, literally caustic and the dirt was deeply ingrained, original colours often long forgotten. The all pervading mix of coaldust and sweat that covered the clothes and bodies of every working man, every boisterous child. Still the woman soaped and scrubbed, boiled and rinsed – a labour of love and pride.
It’s worth taking a moment next time you load your glossy machine, that the washday ‘blues’ of the past were more correctly shades of grey and black and of course red ... although nothing can compare with the smooth and white.
Wash Day in the Valleys
By Vicky McKenzie-Rumble
Our bedsheet, a creative washing history, cherished memories shared in class, a reminder of the past present and future.
Grandmothers with scrubbing boards, flat black irons hissing, the smell of carbolic soap, hair washing, tears from stinging eyes.
Mothers pegging out, a line of dazzling white Terry nappies blowing in the wind. Job creation for the next generation, Hoover, bringing a town out of decline.
Not black gold off the coal belt but white goods, twin tubs coming off the production line.
Community spirit, pit songs being replaced by tunes of the era, sang by a new women’s choir. Mothers teaching us how "not to air your dirty laundry in public”
From communal washing lines for the whole street, to rotary lines in our own private gardens… smalls on the inside, shirts in the middle, towels on the outside… Monday, bed sheets no washing ever done on a Sunday.
A changing society, Hoover just a chapter in our washing history, opened in the 1940’s, soon to close.
Ours is the generation that will remember everything associated with Washdays in the Valleys, just as before, well paid jobs are needed, the Boomers replaced by Zoomers.
Gen Z will breathe new life into our precious town, maybe their memories and stories will be…. Alexa, Do the Laundry.
EVANS, Pauline, Wash Day © Pauline Evans
LEWIS, Christine, Washday Blues © Christine Lewis
Dowlais Visual Art Group, Bed Sheet © Dowlais Visual Art Group