A Resident Remembers

I read the piece in the Sloane Square magazine with interest and have just one key major correction to the comment on p42 that “It was the first housing estate to have baths,” explains Ian.  “They were in the kitchens. It was a little tin bath and it had a wooden flap.  Some residents still remember them .....”.   What an understatement!  I clearly remember that the bath was a heavy cast metal

(? iron) affair and was the size of a standard bath today.  The hinged flap was a large table work top which extended the full length of the bath (roughly 6x3ft) and protruded slightly to the side facing out to the kitchen.  To the left of the bath/table top would have been the sink and a draining board, giving the length of the kitchen as some 8-9ft.  From there, you went through a door onto the open balcony area where, on one side , there was a toilet and, on the other, a coal cellar and a larder with a mesh grill directly above where the coal would be shovelled.  No refrigerators in those days. ‘Elf and safety - never heard of it! Rumour had it that some residents actually stored their extra coal in the bath if they were not fortunate in renting a shed!

 

On the opposite side of the room to the bath was, at one end, a boiler for hot water which was heated from a fire range stove in the adjoining front room, cupboard space and a gas cooker on four legs.  To fill the bath, you had to manually transfer the hot water from one side of the kitchen to the other - no pipes and taps.  The transfer was done via a largish scoop with numerous trips carrying hot water from one side of the room to the other.  Inevitably, this meant that you bathed in just about the minimum amount of water possible to be able to wet your legs and get a good wash down.  One of the greatest luxuries available to us was a visit to the Chelsea Baths – now the Sports Centre – where they had a number of normal baths and you could luxuriate, very cheaply, in a bath with as much hot water as you liked.  Pure bliss!

 

Heating was provided by the a coal fired ‘range’ in the front room which, during the winter, could be used to cook all meals as it had a large area for cooking pans, its own oven and the above-mentioned boiler linked to the kitchen.   For additional heating, there was an individual grate in each bedroom, fired by coal.  These were very rarely used – mainly when in bed sick during the wintertime.   Lighting to the flat was by gaslight, paraffin oil lamps and candles until shortly after the Word War II ended when electricitywas introduced.

 

How ever did we survive in those days prior to modernisation during the late ‘seventies and early ‘eighties via complete reorganisation of the layout of individual flats to encompass proper bathrooms, central heating and the introduction of entry-phones and lifts, where feasible????  We must have been a hardy lot.

 

David Lloyd