photo sharing and upload picture albums photo forums search pictures popular photos photography help login
Dave H | all galleries >> Ecchinswell & local - photos >> Old local photos, Ecchinswell and surounding areas > laundry cottages 1900
previous | next

laundry cottages 1900


other sizes: small medium large original auto
comment | share
Linda Prior 29-Dec-2015 22:26
My family lived in the Laundry Cottages for many years. My Grand mother x 4 Mary Trigg nee prater lived there until her death and was buried at Ecchinswell Church 1911 with inscription on headstone from Kingsmill family for her years of dedication . I believe the ladies may be relatives as we have a photograph of this in our collection.
Jacqueline 03-Sep-2011 14:29
Seem to recall my Great Great Grandparents lived at Laundry Cottages, Sydmonton Henry Drewitt and his wife Mary Louisa (nee Prout) they had 11 children, 10 of which survived. Very interested in finding out more about this house and their lives. Not entirely sure how long they lived there but certainly there about the turn of the 20th century. Eldest child Annie, my Great Grandmother born July 1886
John Lewis 27-Apr-2011 11:14
I am fairly sure my gt-Uncle Seth Cooper and his wife Alice Elizabeth (nee Smith) lived for some time in the Laundry Cottages at Sydmonton Court, where Seth worked as an estate carpenter, before moving to the laundry at Rats Cottages, Ecchinswell which also did laundry for the Kingsmill family.

That laundry cottage was very similar to the Sydmonton Court one. Rats Cottages lost most of the low extension on the right some years ago.

This extension contained three rooms, the wash room had a big copper and several large sinks plus mangles etc, the ironing room had a high bench around two sides where the actual ironing was done. The third room was built onto the wall dividing the ironing room from the wash room and was a large drying room heated by a coke stove that also heated the many varied shapes of irons. It got very hot here in the summer months.

Gt-Aunt Alice had bcome guardian to my mother's elder sisters, Doris and Hilda Cooper after their mother died in 1921 and when my Mother took us to visit Ecchinswell during the early 1940s they did most of the laundry work, helped by Maud (surname unknown). Slave labour Aunt Hilda called it in later years!

I remember the laundry part of the cottage very well and often helped by pumping water up into the big tank in the roof. Immediately behind the cottage was a large drying area and beyond that a very long allotment garden, at the far end of which was a stream that I fell into on one occasion :-)
DAVID SOPP 04-Sep-2006 15:09
This photograph is of the Laundry-end of Laundry Cottages, Sydmonton. It was the laundry for the big house - SYDMONTON COURT - and the family of the KINGSMILLS. The ladies sitting on the grass were presumably the Laundrymaids/Laundresses? By their style, they appear to be Edwardian, rather than Victorian. My Dad's parents lived in this house, and moved out in 1946.