While the area began to change in response to new communities, modern appliances like fridges and washing machines changed the way people lived their lives, regardless of their own background. In some instances, products like TVs shaped the way people socialised and came together.
In this section we present people’s memories on their lives at home, the way things have evolved since they were young, the excitement of getting new appliances – a fridge for example, or a telephone.
To enjoy more memories, please visit the Teachers and schools page under the Resources section – Link here. For more photos, please visit the Photo Gallery.
Originally, in the first house we had in Wembley, we regularly… I mean there were fire places in four rooms, we only used the one in the rear sitting room, and we regularly had a coal fire in there, we used to order our coal from a firm called (…) in Oax Lane, who had a coal yard by Wembley Central station and a shop in London Road where they sold their coal. Then, after we moved to our new house in Sudbury – new, I mean, it was built in the mid-thirties but it was new to us, that’s what I’m trying to say – after we moved there, we never had open fires, we went over to electric heating but there was an Ideal boiler and we kept this Ideal boiler going with a little brick hat called ‘furnside’ which were made somewhere near mountains in South Wales… I think it was a place called (…) I think, not sure about that but it was somewhere, I can almost pinpoint the factory, and these things were ideal for burning to provide us with warm things in the kitchen and hot water, which of course we had to stock this boiler everyday, and we kept that going for many years and that was really right up to the miners’ strike in the eighties, and surprisingly we went to… we didn’t expect we get any coal, because of that year… we actually got it, believe it or not, from… what was used in these days of the strike called the East Anglian Coal Fields. Now, anybody listening to that would think ‘The East Anglian Coal Field, what are we talking about?’ because with boats arriving in small non-union ports like Braighlingsea and just unloading a cargo of German coal and this stuff was taken from the quay side direct to customers all sort of queuing up for it, but that was the last year that we got it because I think the site close down shortly after that, we had to take that out and put storage heaters in.
Robert
We had a TV, like lot of people, for the Coronation, the Queen’s Coronation in 1953. Not many people had televisions in our area anyway before then, and we wanted to watch the Coronation, so they had… I think it was called ‘Radio Rentals’ in Wembley, and there were a lot of renting places for televisions in those days, in fact not many people bought a television, you would rent it, so we rented this television for the Coronation, and I remember that that morning my mum prepared the lunch early, it was when my aunt was still living upstairs, so she came down and we all sat around this television all day, to watch the television, to watch the Coronation. The size of the television screen would have been about 12 inches.
Barbara
We had a television before we got married, which was very strange because we had little else, but we had the television. My husband is Irish, and he is very keen on Irish sport. His team had reached a final the week before we got married, and it was televised on BBC Two, which was a very new service at that time, and so we acquired a television on hire purchase too. We paid for that gradually, we only had one thing at a time, but we paid for that… I think it was something like eighty guineas, so that he could see the match. So, the Sunday before we got married, I had a house full of men watching this match on the television ‘cos nobody had BBC Two. Very few people had television even, and they had to sit on the floor ‘cos we didn’t have anything for them to sit on!
Kathleen
When I came here I had to wash by hand. We put the clothes in the bath, with soap, and then we had to wash them by hand. It was hard, but you get on with it. And like sheets and blankets and so, we had to take them to the laundrette. And then we leaved them there and they get cleaned, and then we had to go back for them. Pay, you had to pay for them. Those that we washed by hand, we had to find somewhere to hang them and they would dry. If it’s summertime they hang them outside, but in the winter… that was the hardest part. We didn’t have central heating like now, we had the paraffin heather, we used the paraffin, put oil in the lamp, big glass lamp, and then we lighted it, and then the heat from that.
Cislyn
Appliances? We didn’t have any to start with (laughs)… didn’t even have a fridge! I bought it (the fridge) second hand from somebody I worked with and it costed eight pounds. I had no washing machine and we used cloth nappies, which had to be boiled in a galvanised bucket on the cooker. That was the first job every day. I had a second hand hoover I think, for a while. The fridge was a Kelvinator – long since defunct as a company, and I had a vacuum cleaner that I acquired second hand from somewhere but I can’t remember what that was… but I know I bought eventually a new one and it was a hoover ‘Constellation’ and it was round, and it was pink and cream… I can see it now! I paid it eighteen guineas for it – guineas were a pound and a shilling, pound and five p in new terms – and we bought it on hire purchase, so much a month. It seems incredible now, but we did (laughs).
Kathleen
It was so great having a washing machine and I didn’t have to use my hands anymore. It was like a birthday! That’s like my husband sees, like my birthday present. It was good because the kids were small then you always had lot to wash.
Norma
Milk bottles were in like earthenware containers in a larder, so every house had a larder. Then we had an early refrigerator, and everything was different. We still had milk bottles, glass milk bottles delivered to the door. My mother was (also) able to ring up the order for groceries and greengroceries. So, there were three sets of deliveries: milkman, grocers and greengrocers. Then my father would probably have had his collars, separate collars, because shirts were collarless. We had ‘Collars of Wembley’, it was a specific firm that just laundered collars on a sort of fortnightly basis, and they got delivered in a brown box.
Francis
I was 18 and we had one (telephone) at home cos of my dad’s work, but we did try to acquire one when we got married, mainly to keep in touch with my parents. At that time, we had a party line, you had to share a line, so if they were using the phone you had to wait ‘till they finished before you could make a call. We used it all the time. I mean, it was a great novelty! (…) There was a limit to the people you could ring cause not everyone had a phone.
Kathleen
Father’s collars got pretty grubby, and the cuffs, and they used to be rubbed with the Fairy soap and then popped into the old copper washing machine, which was an electric copper that heated up the water. Everything was washed whites first and then taken out, and then coloured things, and then the soapy water would be emptied from the copper, and the soap suds, used on the garden, and then sometimes the copper was refilled for rinsing, and sometimes my mother used the sink in the kitchen.
Patricia
Yeah, the milkman was a great part of the community, really, and the elderly people in those days used to get potatoes and eggs and bread and other things from him. He and the postman, of course, used to take note of unexpected curtains not drawn or milk not taken in, that sort of thing, which was, you know, a community thing. That’s all gone, of course. You know, if it was a regular postman he’d notice if the milk hadn’t been taken in or if the curtains weren’t pulled or something like that. My husband was a postman for many years and he… They used to sort of call out to him ‘Will you bring me in a paper’ or ‘Will you post a letter for me’ or… you know, so they were a part of community. That’s gone as well.
Kathleen
In those days you only bought your gas and electricity from, you know, the Gas Board or… Eastern Electricity was the supplier for this area and they sold cookers and fires and electrical appliances and, you know, nobody else sold them in those days, only those showrooms. We bought a cooker from the Gas Board when we got married, and you used to go in to pay your bill as well. Again, as I said, everything was done in cash, so there was a cash office at the back of the showroom where they sold all sorts of… The Electricity one was at the far end of Wembley, next to Woolworths, the Gas Board was down, coming up towards Sudbury.
Kathleen
But we had no….there’s no central heating. There’s no central heating now. I just had an open gas fire. We used to have coal. Coal fires in the winter and I do remember one time when it was a really bad winter, I think ‘62, ’63 so there’s really a lot of snow. They had a pile of snow on the ground outside and it took three months to melt. We made a snowman and it…. The house faces south at the back and there was a coal bunker and next to it was this big pile of mound of snow made up and it took three months to melt and it was so big, it got so compressed and I remember being, I don’t know whether it would have been the half term, because you know, the February half term, we used to have this fire and it was paraffin, like a paraffin fire. Very dangerous you know, if you knocked them over. That was in the corner of the room, but we a the coal fire and we used to have coal. The boiler was still coal fire in 1990. The hot water and I remember the coal man would deliver the coal by, you know, would come around by the lorry. They would walk up the alleyway carrying their bags and put it in the coal bunker and I remember being tasked to count them, in case they try and cheat you ..but there’s, still no central heating there now.
David
Well, a black and white TV. I remember when I was off, I was off school for about a couple weeks, I had chicken pox and I remember there was a small TV that they put in the room and I remember watching stuff, you know whilst everybody else was downstairs. I remember that and the small black and white TV. But it was quite a big thing to a get a colour TV because our neighbours had one and they had a very big one. I think he was a policeman, you know they were quite well off and I remember they had a big colour TV and it was like “Oh! Why don’t we get one of these?” But that was around the 1970s, 71. We didn’t have a telephone until 1977.
David
We used to have coal delivered [00:41:37] to the side of the house, we used to have coal hole down the side of the house with a wooden, little wooden door, and the coalman used to come, walk down the path and xxx the coal… it used to be in the kitchen! Oh God, can you believe it! There’s a step down – I’ll show you later – There’s a step down and into that there was a coal hut, can you believe that (laughs), I can’t believe we’ve had a house like that!
Patricia M
Yes, err, yes, we had one I think in the fifties it was a big black and white box which is one channel BBC1, that was the only thing you can watch on it, err, TV started in the early sixties, and then BBC2, err, colour TV started I think in the early seventies, err, we always used to rent a television for some reasons I never quite understood, we paid Radio Rentals locals we used to pay them 4 pound a week or so, xxx did that, but that xxx and my mother just kept doing it I suppose err but yes we did that until probably two thousand.
John
Yes, yes, the kitchen was interesting because we had err we used to put clothes to the ring so we had a washing machine I think, err, I probably initially washed clothes by hand we used to put them through a ring, a mangle, xxx but certainly no fridge in the fifties, so we had a pantry, which is one a sort of the coldest room you could find in the house if you like, it was part of the kitchen, so you keep in the pantry for two or three days yes, err, when the xxx fridge err perfectly possible, you know xxx. Yes, we’ve got central heating by the sixties, but before we only had fires err so I remember the coal man xxx err yes, that’s was quite interesting you had to bring the coal in and stove the fire but of course lot of smoke coming out of the chimney and I vaguely remember one or two quite heavy fogs there used to be smokes all around in the forties and fifties err because all the dirty err wasn’t quite healty, if it was winter and there was the fog err you go out, you come back and you try to cover your facve but when you ring it back you’re really dirty and filthy and that’s because all the fires.
John
Oh I remember the first house I stayed with my sister, in her house, was an old block of flats very old fashioned and there was no bath, and we were on the third floor, a family on the second floor, and then on the ground floor there was another family. But really basic, very basic. No running hot water, tin bath for a bath once a week, I think I would, and… you knew no difference, so it was no big issue. Obviously now, you know, with all modern showers, more cons so… but it’s not bad to have experienced hardship either, you appreciate more when you’ve had hardship and when you come to live a reasonable comfortable life. Well, that was a big tin bath and you had to boil kettle on [..] and put some water, and obviously pour it, and then cool it down with cold water, and obviously I think we used to have it in our little small kitchen, and obviously you had to close the door, you had bit of privacy, it is, it is… that was only how you did, you didn’t know how to compare it to anything else, you didn’t think about posh baths or shower or […]. But the tin bath just, I think it was once a week, it sounds a dream now, but at the time it was the way it was. I do remember our neighbours next door, Paul was my best friend, and his family had a bath on a Saturday night and what […] to me is… ’cause I used to go around to watch their television, we didn’t have one, we used to watch western and stuff, but bath night, they had a bath, again, I think they called it the scullery, and you could smell the soap, the freshness of soap coming through as you watched, as I was watching a western. That’s the […] fair enough, but that’s the way it is.
Tony
