The 1940s House: The Kitchen
IWM Senior Historian Terry Charman tours IWM London’s 1940s House (closed January 2012) and speaks about life in wartime Britain for the typical family.
IWM Senior Historian Terry Charman tours IWM London’s 1940s House (closed January 2012) and speaks about life in wartime Britain for the typical family.
The family had weird bread at some point. This contradicts. The sweeper my great gram had in the 70’s 80’s. Also a vacuum but the sweeper didn’t make a terrible sound. Sensible. Didn’t have to plug it in.
HUGH-ver? Hoover
Neat video, I very much liked it ! Appreciate the narration, Cindy 🙂
Why does it sound like David Walliams is narrating this
I get the impression that much less was wasted back in those days.
I still have my grandparents ration books and a few other things. I’d like to maybe donate them to a museum if possible
my mum is a brit & i can say the english kitchen in the 1940s was way behind the US kitchens.
I remember my mother when visiting her sometimes after age 18 during the early 1980’s seeing that she was having to bake bread every morning while at the same time she was trying to figure out how to make it as a school bus driver of a 66 passenger bus with standard transmission on it while at the time being a professional driver of any kind at all in many places around the world was reserved for only men. To keep the bread dough warm enough to rise she would put the huge bread pan with a lid to bed with the covers drawn over top of it to save energy at the same time in an always kept cool in the winter home too.
👍 I love the design of the old days many decades before I was born. Now I understand why I love so much vintage design. 😀 I miss the nativity and the simplicity of the good old days before I was born. 💐 🌞 Efrat Israel.🍍
Wow how easy we have it today. I wonder how people would react if we had rations during COVID-19?
Looks lovely, actually, and probably so quiet. No fridge and freezer always making noise.
Thanks for information india
Jesus life sure sucked when my dad was a kid
People are freaking out because they can’t go for a beer or go out for a meal.
Imgine the riots that would ensue over food and energy rationing
How extraordinary
Beautiful kitchen! The electric sink to wash clothes was better than what my grandmother had. She also washed on Mondays, but heated water outside over a fire. It took all day to wash clothes. She also cooked on a wood cook stove and got water from a well or from the spring. There was no bathroom, rather an outhouse. Heating was with a wood stove in the living room. It heated the living room but not much else. What kept one warm at night were a lot of quilts on the bed. Lights were kerosene lamps. This was in rural America in the 1940’s.
This looks quite luxurious compared with our kitchen when I was a child. No sink, no running water, there was a communal tap in the middle of a square of 7 other houses, water was collected in the morning for the day in 2 metal buckets, the buckets were kept under a table with a bowl on top and was used for cooking and drinks. No carpet sweeper, (no carpet) – the boiler to heat water for the weekly wash was in an outhouse, my older sister used to help my mother with the washing which was done once a week. No pantry in the kitchen, there was a coal house , the coal man used to have to carry the sacks of coal through the kitchen and tip the coal into the coal house – imagine the dust and the cleaning up afterwards with just a broom, brush and dust pan and scrubbing brush. We did have the luxury of an electric cooker and kettle, many didn’t, and we were always well fed.
In the 40s I lived in an old Victorian (read "Munster") house in Upstate New York. Winters were cold -30F and colder. Water in bedroom drinking glasses would freeze. It had a 20ft X 20ft kitchen, an icebox, a coal stove and water in 5gal bottles. It was the warmest room in the house. Meals were "made from scratch" And, took hours to prepare. The men did the outdoors and"hard" work like shoveling coal into the furnace, but, the women worked longer hours. Late spring, summer, and early fall were nice but, winter was brutish, espesially for a kid walking two miles each way to school. The "good old days" where pneumonia or polio could kill you wern´t so nice.
We still use a carpet sweeper regularly. They do an excellent job!
We have more materially, but we’ve lost a great deal more on another level. Our spirits suffer for the loss. It’s a shame.
0:42-0:48 and some say the housewife is still washing to this day
Not wise to glorify the past when the present is where we are. Learn from it, yes, but all the whining about how "simple" life was back then, and how people "slept well," and other blather—they had terrible worries to deal with, as has every single generation of humanity, and life was FAR from simple!
I’ll take today and deal with it, thank you, knowing what’s coming very soon.
Oh my goodness, it so much more better than mine!
😂😂😂
Mortal Kombat movie
Wowww thats scary. 😳
This video isn’t about the 1940’s kitchen. It’s about rationing.
We’re blessed now
I want a house like this…. where can i get designers???😚
What no meat safe .dolly tub .posser ringer ??
This house is about 20-30 years behind a typical middle class American house of the same size built at the same time. By the late 30’s in the US it was probably 75/25 refrigerators/ice boxes, but almost everyone would have one or the other. Most people would have a washing machine – the kind with an agitator tub and a powered wringer. And an electric vacuum cleaner, which we never called a "Hoover" even if most of them were Hoovers. Any middle class house built after about 1900 would have centrally heated running hot water and often central heat, which might be convection hot air with a manually stoked coal furnace in 1915 and an electric blower gas furnace by 1930. Almost all those coal furnaces would have been replaced or switched to gas by say 1950, or to heating oil. There are still heating oil run furnaces in many cities, mostly for apartment buildings but also some houses still.
Love this kitchen! It would suit me just fine.
How do people in the 1940s keep their homes warm? My 1940 house is poorly insulated
I would do anything to have a 1960s or 1970s version of that.
Memories of my childhood!
I remember the wartime experience, despite being a kid. Post War analysts say, we as a nation, were at our fitest, because of the lack of sugery things, and far less fats. As shown here, people were far more physically active too.
Compared to the US of the same time, It looks a lot rougher for a similarly affluent household in the UK. Of course the Great Depression made a lot of households anything but affluent but staying neutral for awhile as the economy picked up helped Americans improve their homes before rationing set in when industries retooled to make items for the war. My father had a traveling job and was able to pick up rare things in stores in various towns he went to, including a kid’s bicycle and a tricycle, which by then were quite the find, both because of the metal and the tires.
Thanks the USA had similar rations, but if you lived in the country like my grandparents did u could have a garden and save some seed for the next year. She told me neighbors shared
I think that even today half the people in the world not fortunate enough to have a kitchen like the one you are showing. Britain must remain proud of itself. In fact Britain has taught the world the meaning of the word kitchen.
What happened to the cast ? Where are they today in 2020?
Yep. Grandma’s house.
I’m sad this wasn’t longer and I’m kind of cross you didn’t detail the food shown. I couldn’t identify all the ration allotments from the picture and would have liked to have known more detail like if that was for a family or a single person and how much of each item etc. Please do an expanded video.
My great grandmother bought a new 1930s house for £250.00 and lived there till 1999 when she died, the house was a time capsule apart from electronics, the kitchen was original along with an outside toilet and garage, I walk past the house sometimes and it’s completely modern, shame in a way.
oh I love the past,the 1960-70😍. I never buy any new furnitures,my furnitures are all from the 90’s,80’s,70’s and way way back. If they break I have them repaired. My kitchentable is from ’78, from my childhood home. I like to think that my furnitures have a history,I would never ever buy something new…I leave that for other people.
that is not a kitchen from the 1940’s it’s from the 20’s. do your homework.
I Love videos like this Thank You
Can you imagine the outrage today, if that were a 1wk ration for 1 person? 🤦♀️
So awesome and interesting!
No obesity back in those days! Hard work for all made life move slower & healthier even though the diet was limited. Lard butty for the hard up lad! Still war ain’t the answer!
this is a 1920’s American kitchen.
The women probably just spent all their time cooking. Sad