The 1940s suburban house: the kitchen

Based on the webmaster's childhood recollections

As explained on the 1940s house page, the most up-to-date 1940s English suburban semi-detached houses were built in the 1930s. All had the same basic plan.

The estate where our family lived, however, was fortunate in that the kitchens were larger than most. They were large enough for a walk-in pantry or larder, albeit a small one and for a table.

This meant that we could eat in our kitchen. Most other families I knew on other estates had to eat in one of the other rooms which either meant heating two rooms in winter or, more likely, being cold in one of them.

Apart from the table and walk-in pantry, though, our kitchen was much like the kitchen in any other 1930s-built suburban house, which meant that it was much like that in any other suburban house in 1940s Britain.

The kitchen was a pleasant place to be because it was light and warm. It was light because the walls and window sills were tiled with white shiny tiles, like in the bathroom - the fashion at the time - and it was warm because of the coal-fired boiler which was on in all but the most excessive of heat waves to provide hot water. The floor, like the bathroom was black and white tiles.

The Easi-cabinet

As you entered the kitchen from the hall, on the right was what was called an 'Easi-cabinet' which was a combination of two cupboards at the bottom, and two inset cupboards at the top. Between them was a storage space and a pull-out enamelled surface for rolling out pastry.

Easi-cabinet was a trade name. There were several versions from different manufacturers, all going by different names, and every kitchen seemed to have one. Ours was varnished wood of a medium colour which one would have been called 'light' in those days of dark wood almost everywhere. I suspect that it came with the house when it was built as there were identical ones in other kitchens in the road.

The photograph shows the unit which was closest to ours out of all those I have seen in museums. Museums, naturally enough, exist to display what they have, which is why so many doors and drawers are open and so many objects are propped up. In a real 1940s kitchen, everything would have been tidied away after use.

Our Easi-cabinet had a separate, matching shelved cupboard, butting onto it on the right. It was the same height as the Easi-cabinet and including a tall, narrow slot for an ironing board. All sorts of things were poked inside it, including the electric iron.

The oven

Just beyond the Easi-cabinet was the oven. It was powered by gas with a hob on top - although 'hob' was not a word that I heard until much later. It was modern in the late 1930s, in white enamel with black fittings (in contrast to the grey in many other kitchens). It also had what was the then special feature of a pilot light. Most of the gas hobs in other houses had to be lit with matches or a flint contraption.

The oven had a lid that could close down, presumably for tidiness. However, it never was closed down. The kettle had to stand somewhere and the open hob was the best place as it would have eventually scratched the enamel lid of the oven.

Interestingly, because of my mother's childhood with coal fired kitchen ranges for cooking, this oven was always called the 'gas oven' until her dying day. It was never just the 'oven'.

The sink and draining board

Beyond the oven was the sink arrangement. Its design was like the early 1900s sink of my mother's childhood except that there was a hot as well as a cold tap. Both came out of the tiled wall. I have never seen an identical arrangement in any of the museums I have visited, so there is no accurate photograph.

The sink was the standard large white stoneware. (Stoneware is made from a special clay and fired at a very high temperature so that its hardness resembles stone.) The sink held a white enamel bowl for washing up and a dishcloth. Underneath the sink were various other bowls and buckets and the household soap with a carton of washing soda, both of which were used for washing up.

The sink had an enamel draining board attached which I never saw on other housing estates of the same period. Elsewhere, as in the photo, all the draining boards seemed to be wooden. Our enamel one was attached to the sink with metal brackets, and the sink was similarly attached to the wall with metal brackets. I always thought how clean our draining board looked compared with the wooden ones. Bare unvarnished wood always looks rather grubby when wet. I suspect that enamel draining boards were more expensive than wooden ones.

Years later sink and draining board arrangements were replaced by integral sink units. There were no integral sink units in ordinary 1940s houses, although I cannot speak for better-off households.

Before the mid or late 1950s, the space under the draining board was empty, except for the occasional bucket or bowl. When my mother was persuaded to part with her old mangle for a spin dryer, that was where it went.

The back door to the garden

On the wall opposite the door to the hall was the back door to the garden. It had a single glazed top window in it and was made of thin wood with thicker pieces of wood across it. It was painted magnolia. It locked with a large heavy lock operated with a large key which always stayed in the lock. It would have been simplicity itself for a burglar to break the glass, turn the key and gain entry - but fortunately that never happened.

The boiler

To the left of the door was an alcove housing the boiler which was fired with a special type of coal called Phurnacite. It had its own low ceiling which took the top part of the boiler chimney.

Two fairly large pipes went between the ceiling and the boiler. One carried water down from the cold water tank in the loft and the other carried the hot water, heated in the boiler, upstairs to the hot tank, which was in the airing cupboard in the bathroom. I suppose these pipes were rather dominantly ugly by today's standards, but they never struck me that way. My father would put his hand on the hot pipe to test whether the water was hot enough for a bath.

The kitchen table

On the next wall - ie on the left as one entered from the hall - was a small window, underneath which was the table with its three chairs. It was fortunate that there were only the three of us in the family as a fourth chair would have been so close to the oven as to close the walkway through the kitchen. The chairs were dark cane ones, although they were replaced by light wood years later. The table was unvarnished wood, known as 'white-wood' which my mother scrubbed almost daily, just as her mother had done in her own childhood in the early 1900s. I understood that the table had been made in therapeutic work by WW1 soldiers recuperating at Edmonton Military Hospital.

Years later my mother eventually agreed, after much persuasion, to the whitewood table being covered with plastic laminate, known as Formica.

The mangle

Further round against that wall, under some wall-shelves was the mangle which was essentially like the mangle in any Victorian or Edwardian home, although smaller. It was rolled out for use every week. Eventually, sometime in the 1950s, it was discarded and our first fridge went in its place. It was replaced by a spin dryer which went under the draining board.

My mother always regretted getting rid of her mangle. She said, with some justification that a mangle did half of the ironing because the rollers flattened and smoothed the wet washing. She never did have a washing machine, in spite of cajoling. I suppose she was brought up to believe that a woman's work was in the home and that labour-saving devices were in some way decadent.

The pantry/larder

The larder - which we called the pantry - was large enough to walk into - just - and it had shelves, walls and window sill tiled in white like the kitchen. It is described in more details on the pantry page.

The cupboard

To the left of the pantry was a tall built-in cupboard which housed cleaning materials. In smaller kitchens where there was no pantry, there would have been a second cupboard, possibly used for food unless there was a nook somewhere for an indoor food safe. (The old Victorian and Edwardian terraced houses always had a space for an outside in the shade for food safes on stilts or attached to a high wall.)

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