OUR features on the Bolton wash houses has generated a great deal of interest among our readers.

There are plenty of local folk who have memories of these hugely popular facilities — one such person being Dorothy Thornley who wrote in about her own recollections.

Dorothy, who lives in Little Lever, explains that the public wash houses were a "life line" when she was bringing up her four children.

"The wash house in Rothwell Street, Great Lever, was well used.

"I would go twice a week with the big wash (bedding and towels) and the rest of the time I would hand wash or use the bath, then wring out the clothes on a rubber wringer in the back yard.

"Then I would hang them outdoors or on a pulley in the living room, or on a clothes maiden," she explains.

But it was the nappies that caused the most problems for Dorothy, she explains.

There were no disposable nappies in those days and all nappies were made of terry towelling and rather difficult to both wash and dry.

"You only had so many and they had to washed early then they would be dry for later on — especially when you had two children under the age of two."

Dorothy remembers all the mothers in the street helping each other out and the children playing in the street, together.

"Of course it was much safer then as there were not as many cars about.

"But parents did not have it easy then I can tell you!"

Maureen Mcgrath grew up in Great Lever and says she has vivid memories of the Rothwell Street Wash House.

"My mother, Maggie Medowcroft) and I used to go to the wash house on a Saturday morning and one evening a week to do our family wash.

"I would have been around 13-years-old and we used the hand wash which cost one shilling and four pence.

"It was hard work washing a full week's wash by hand. My dad's work jeans were full of oil from the Dobson and Barlow foundry where he used to work, and they smelled of scrap metal," she recalls.

It was Maureen's job to scrub her father's jeans to get them clean.

"When the washing was finished we had to transfer the wet clothes into a zinc bucket which was very heavy to carry. Then we had to take the bucket to a large spinner to get the water out of the clothes.

"Once the clothes had finished spinning we transferred them to the drying racks. These racks pulled out on wheels and had around eight rails which were made of metal and were heated by steam.

"The rails were red hot and we burned ourselves on many occasions."

Having put the clothes on the racks Maureen and Maggie were able to relax and Maureen would go, with another young woman, to the local chippy around the corner in Derby Street for fish and chips.

They would take orders from the other women at the wash house and while the clothes were drying on the racks they would sit and eat their chip supper.

"Some of the older and more experienced women used to put a towel or their headscarves on the table near the roller iron (this was to save their places to do the ironing.

"We would take the weekly wash in the Silver Cross pram. When it was winter and there was snow and ice on the ground we still went to the wash house. It was very hard pushing the pram full of washing through the snow and ice.

"Sometimes on Saturdays, if my mother was working, I was expected to go and do the wash by myself as I was the eldest child.

"By then I would have been around 15-years-old. I continued to go to the wash house after I was married, in 1960, but I upgraded to the automatic washing machine which cost two shillings."

By 1964 a "new and exciting experience in washing had arrived in my neighbourhood in Burlington Street", says Maureen, and this was the launderette.

"This revolutionised washing and made the process of washing easier.

"The launderette sounded the death knell for the wash house and, slowly, all wash houses closed down".

Maureen recalls these days as "hard times" and she felt she had lost some of her teenage years and had to grow up fast.

"But looking back I suppose it has made me the person I am today. Our generation just got on with it and it makes you realise how lucky you are today.

"The younger generation just take the modern gadgets we have today for granted. I can tell you, with confidence, that my generation take nothing for granted," she says.