Remembering visits to the laundrette

Come with us to the laundrette and remember the unmistakable smell of damp washing and soap powder, the glaring strip lights and the incessant hum of the machines...

In 1934 a Texan entrepreneur by the name of JF Cantrell came up with a moneymaking idea – he bought four washing machines and charged people by the hour to use them.

The UK had to wait until 1949 before the ‘washateria’ made it across the Atlantic. The launch was announced, somewhat skeptically in the local paper, “Britain’s first self-service, coinoperated laundrette opened, for a six-month trial, at 184 Queensway in Bayswater. All that housewives have to do is bring the washing, put it in the machine and come back 30 minutes later (charge 2s 6d for 9lbs).”

In the early Fifties only four per cent of us had a washing machine at home so the idea quickly caught on until there was a laundrette on every high street in the UK. As their popularity grew, laundrettes became a social hub where housewives could catch up with their friends and exchange local gossip and quite literally, air their dirty laundry in public!

NEVER LEAVE WASHING UNATTENDED

We’d load up the baby’s pram to transport the washing. Determined to get our money’s worth we’d cram as much as we dare into the machine, despite being surrounded by signs warning us not to over-fill them. It was cheaper to bring our own powder from home but if we forgot there was always a coin-operated vending machine that dispensed just the right amount of powder. Then it was the moment we had to do battle with the coin slot on the washer. It was crucial not to catch the eye of the attendant as you applied more than a little brute force to get it to accept your coins. More signs warned us to ‘Never to leave washing unattended’, so there was nothing else to do but settle in for a good old gossip while the machine worked its magic.

THE LAUNDRETTE WE ALL WANTED TO GO TO!

For many of us those distinctive opening bars of Marvin Gaye’s, I Heard It Through the Grapevine brings just one image to mind... a Fifties-style rocker in an American laundrette calmly stripping down to his boxer shorts surrounded by flustered women and bemused men.

The Levis 501 ad, first shown on Boxing Day 1985, not only helped sales of jeans to rocket, it also (all be it briefly) made a star of its leading man, Nick Kamen, propelled Grapevine back into the charts and sent pulses racing around the world. The most unexpected result though was the boost it gave to the British laundrette industry as we flocked to washaterias in the hope of having our own ‘Levis moment’ .