TWENTY years ago, like a retired pony ridden only sporadically by visiting grandchildren, a veteran piece of machinery in a Bournemouth laundry was pressed into action for a few hours once a week. Today, that machine operates full time. At least 80 years old, mechanically straightforward and sturdy, it consists at heart of a spinning barrel. The layman would struggle to identify it, but this is the wonder tool that, in Britain’s largest surviving domestic laundry, Barker Laundry, irons and polishes up to 2,000 stiff collars a week. How it experienced such a dramatic revival in fortunes is a story of imagination, the internet and heritage TV drama.
For years, the business Matthew Barker had bought from his father offered, to a dwindling number of customers, a laundry service for detachable collars—those worn with dinner jackets or tailcoats, by barristers and Eton schoolboys. It was an esoteric aspect of the otherwise brisk trade carried out by a company offering an old-fashioned, collect and-clean service to some 4,000 households across central and south-eastern England and the capital. Correctly, Mr Barker identified this historical survival—a throwback to prewar clothing manufacture, when shirts and collars were separate items, laundered individually and attached with studs—as likely to engage the interest of his website browsers.
Bu hikaye Country Life UK dergisinin June 24, 2020 sayısından alınmıştır.
Start your 7-day Magzter GOLD free trial to access thousands of curated premium stories, and 9,000+ magazines and newspapers.
Already a subscriber ? Giriş Yap
Bu hikaye Country Life UK dergisinin June 24, 2020 sayısından alınmıştır.
Start your 7-day Magzter GOLD free trial to access thousands of curated premium stories, and 9,000+ magazines and newspapers.
Already a subscriber? Giriş Yap
Happiness in small things
Putting life into perspective and forces of nature in farming
Colour vision
In an eye-baffling arrangement of geometric shapes, a sinister-looking clown and a little girl, Test Card F is one of television’s most enduring images, says Rob Crossan
'Without fever there is no creation'
Three of the top 10 operas performed worldwide are by the emotionally volatile Italian composer Giacomo Puccini, who died a century ago. Henrietta Bredin explains how his colourful life influenced his melodramatic plot lines
The colour revolution
Toxic, dull or fast-fading pigments had long made it tricky for artists to paint verdant scenes, but the 19th century ushered in a viridescent explosion of waterlili
Bullace for you
The distinction between plums, damsons and bullaces is sweetly subtle, boiling down to flavour and aesthetics, but don’t eat the stones, warns John Wright
Lights, camera, action!
Three remarkable country houses, two of which have links to the film industry, the other the setting for a top-class croquet tournament, are anything but ordinary
I was on fire for you, where did you go?
In Iceland, a land with no monks or monkeys, our correspondent attempts to master the art of fishing light’ for Salmo salar, by stroking the creases and dimples of the Midfjardara river like the features of a loved one
Bravery bevond belief
A teenager on his gap year who saved a boy and his father from being savaged by a crocodile is one of a host of heroic acts celebrated in a book to mark the 250th anniversary of the Royal Humane Society, says its author Rupert Uloth
Let's get to the bottom of this
Discovering a well on your property can be viewed as a blessing or a curse, but all's well that ends well, says Deborah Nicholls-Lee, as she examines the benefits of a personal water supply
Sing on, sweet bird
An essential component of our emotional relationship with the landscape, the mellifluous song of a thrush shapes the very foundation of human happiness, notes Mark Cocker, as he takes a closer look at this diverse family of birds