Dreaming of Tomorrow: Community Life

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Robyn Buchanan relates in Ipswich in the 20th Century what life was like in this period.

Ipswich was a simpler place in the late 1940s and the 1950s, and most households were basic compared with today’s relative affluence. Immediately after the war, many families still used an ice-chest instead of a refrigerator. The “ice-an” arrived daily at the kitchen door with a block carried in large tongs or on a hessian sugar-bag thrown over his shoulder. Washing was still done in some households using a copper boiler, and it was considered quite an advance to buy a hand wringer which clamped onto the concrete laundry tubs.

Milk was delivered early each morning to the front door and the baker still arrived in a horse-drawn cart. Cribb & Foote sent a staff member around to sit in kitchens and take orders for groceries; these would be delivered the next day right to the kitchen table. There were two postal deliveries each day and urgent messages arrived as a telegram, delivered by a boy on a bicycle.

Many households did not have a telephone. Many families also did not own a car and adults commonly rode bicycles to work. This was particularly noticeable at the Railway Workshops where a stream of bicycles came through town at knock-off time.