Ironing and laundry rooms

Ironing room in Doll's house c.1676. Rijksmuseum

Washing clothes, doing the laundry and ironing is such a basic occupation. Queen Elizabeth had a “Brusher of our robes,” as wool and silk clothing is difficult to launder, however she also had laundresses who were paid for washing and starching linens, both for linen clothing and specifically a “Laundres for the Quenes majesties table stuffe.” (Arnold, 1988)  Only slightly lower down the social scale in the Earl of Salisbury’s accounts there are payments made to Bettres Hickman who’s bill survives and charges 6d per week for eight weeks washing, starching, smoothing and perfuming the shirts, bands and aprons of Tony, one of the servants in the kitchen, who warranted this special service because he was at that time “absent about his eyesight.” (Munby, 1986)

Sometimes in other households accounts there are references to items being washed. In 1648 James Master pays “for washing and mending my linnen 2 weeks &c 4s 8d” (Robertson, 1883), and when the LeStrange family visited London in 1620 they paid “for a woman for washing 1s and for soap 2s”, when at home they had their own wash house. (Whittle & Griffiths, 2012)

Sometimes even silks could be washed and ironed. Hannah Wooley’s The compleat servant-maid of 1677 describes how to wash and iron sarsenets, this is specifically aimed at sarsenet hoods. Once they are washed she says to “draw them between your hands every way till they be little more than half dry, then smooth them with good hot irons the same way you did wash them, and upon the right side of the sarsenet.” Black sarsenets on the other hand should be “iron'd upon the wrong side and on a woollen cloth.” (Wooley, 1677)

 

Laundry or wash rooms

Stately homes might well have rooms specifically used for laundry. The Household inventories of Helmingham Hall in Suffolk give a flavour of these, though the term laundry is not actually used until the 1708 inventory. In the 1597 inventory the room, described as the “outwarde dairie” has 3 great brass kettles, 2 dyeing pans, 1 washing tub, 1 bucking tub (a  bucking tub was used to soak linens in a lye of wood ashes), 1 washing keeler (a keeler is a shallow tub) and 14 pails. By the 1626 inventory there are two bucking tubs and a bucking keeler, plus “one lowe foure footed stoole for the buckeinge tubb”, and one “heareinge lyne hangeinge,” that is a line to hang the linen on. As mentioned before the LeStrange family in Norfolk also had a wash house which, in 1675, contained three lead cisterens for water, the accounts record the purchase of both bucking tubs and rinsing tubs. (Whittle & Griffiths, 2012) The use of lye for bucking was common, though in a work, originally published in French in 1698, Henri Misson commented that, “At London, and in all other Parts of the Country where they do not burn Wood, they do not make Lye. All their Linnen, coarse and fine, is wash'd with Soap.” (Misson, 1719)

 Ironing or linen rooms

 In the 1626 Helmingham inventory there is a separate “dryeing chamber,” which has two “heareinge lynes”, 3 wicker baskets to carry linen in, a linen press and a “suffering presse to drye lynne on.” In the 1708 inventory there is also a “horss to hang linen upon” and four smoothing hand irons. (Coleman, 2018) The use of the term horse, as in clothes horse seems to first appear in the mid sixteenth century, where it is described as, “An instrument in an house whereon garments and other things be hanged.” (Cooper, 1565) Three surviving late seventeenth century Dutch doll’s houses, two in the Rijksmuseum, one dating from c.1676 and one, the house of Petronella Oortman from c.1686-1710, and one in Utrecht Museum, all have linen or ironing rooms. Above right is the one in Petronella Dunois’ house c. 1676. This room has an ironing table or board upon two trestles, with an ironing blanket to put the linens on whilst ironing them, a box iron, wicker baskets of the type in the Helmingham inventories, and above the doll’s head, wooden poles to carry the drying linens.

Pressing irons

When being made clothes were pressed, using a pressing iron, the better-known term today, sad iron, does not appear until the eighteenth century. (OED). The term pressing iron for this sort of solid iron appears as early as 1343 in the Reading Abbey Tailor's Compotus (BL Add. 19657). Another term is smoothing iron, as the Helmingham inventories. In 1574 among other things provided to Elizabeth’s Office of the Wardrobe of Robes was “one pressinge iron,” others followed in 1580, 1594, and later.  (Arnold, 1988)

 Box irons

Box irons are hollow and designed either to hold charcoal as the heating element, or to take a solid heated slug of iron, as John Evelyn put it , “a thick piece of Yron, such as Laundresses use to put in their Smoothing boxes”.(Diary, Oct 8^th 1672) The image left is of a surviving box iron in the Musée Le Secq des Tournelles in Rouen, it is dated 1635 and is German, the decoration around the outside depicts a hunting scene, and the handle is ivory. The box iron in Petronella Dunois’ house is of brass with a wooden handle and has its own stand, the whole thing being only 3.5 cm high, image below.  

 References

Arnold, J., 1988. Queen Elizabeth's Wardrobe Unlock'd. Leeds: Maney.

Coleman, M., 2018. Household Inventories of Helmingham Hall 1597-1741. Woodbridge: Boydell Press for The Suffolk Records Society.

Cooper, T., 1565. Thesaurus linguae Romanae & Britannicae. 1st ed. London: In aedibus quondam Bertheleti, cum priuilegio Regiæ Maiestatis, per Henricum VVykes.

Misson, H., 1719. Memoirs and Observations in his Travels over England. London: Printed for D. Browne, A. Bell, J. Darby, A. Bettesworth, J. Pemberton.

Munby, L. M., 1986. Early Stuart Household Accounts. Ware: Hertfordshire Record Society.

Robertson, S., 1883. The expense Book of James Master 1646-1676 [Part 1, 1646-1655], transcribed by Mrs Dallison.. Archaeologia Cantiana, Volume 15, pp. 152-216.

Whittle, J. & Griffiths, E., 2012. Consumption and Gender in the Early Seventeenth Century Household. Oxford: OUP.

Wooley, H., 1677. The compleat servant-maid; or, The young maidens tutor. London: printed for T. Passinger, at the Three Bibles on London Bridge.