The scullery in a working class house in the early 1900s

Based on childhood recollections of working class family life in north London in Edwardian times.

In the early 1900s when I was a child, the scullery was where the food preparation, cooking and washing took place and where brooms and brushes were kept. The sketch shows its arrangement in a typical Victorian-style terrace house where I grew up in Edmonton (now Enfield) in north London.

 

The layout of the scullery in a Victorian-style terrace house in the early 1900s.

The entrance to the scullery was from the kitchen.

The floor was stone and it was two steps lower than the rest of the downstairs, probably to allow for water inevitably getting splashed and spilt on washdays.

Against the window was a white wood table made by one of the carpenters at the Infirmary. Lots of things were made of plain unvarnished white wood - the bread board, the lid of the copper, the knife box and green squeezer - and they all had to be scrubbed to keep the dirt out of the grain.

There was a large cooking range called a kitchener which was used when I was young. However it was boarded up when I was a teenager because my parents felt that it was a fire hazard. They were right because I remember a red hot spark from another chimney getting into our chimney and setting the wooden surround alight. Through the presence of mind of my elder brother, the fire was brought under control quite quickly.

Next to the cooking range, in the corner was the copper for heating our water.

On one of the walls was a naked gas jet. When it was lit it gave off a flame like a fan shaped prong because for some reason it never had a mantle.

Off from the scullery was a small alcove or cubby hole for the sink with a single cold water tap made of brass. This was the only water supply in the house. Hot water had to be heated in either the copper or in a kettle.

The alcove was well planned as it did afford some privacy when we washed there. On the wall was a wooden plate drainer and a soap box. No exotic soap ever found its way there, just ordinary household soap, usually with little pieces of grit embedded in where my mother had used it to wash the floor. We used it for washing ourselves, but I don't think our complexions suffered because of it.

The scullery had a side door into the yard which led to the back garden and the outside lavatory.

This website Join me in the 1900s is also known as Join me in the 1900's and is © Pat Cryer.

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