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Home » The Domestic Sphere » Activities in the home » House cleaning

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  • The 'Baby Daisy' Vacuum Cleaner, Model No. 2 was a manual suction cleaner that required two people to operate. One pumped or pedaled the bellows and the other held the suction nozzle.
'Baby Daisy' Vacuum Cleaner, c. 1907
  • The three vacuum cleaners shown here are: 1. A Reeves Vacuum Cleaner Co. Milford CT USA, consisting of a long tube and nozzle, with a wooden handle which is pumped to create suction, 2. A 1930s manual suction vacuum cleaner, 3. An early form of 'Boreas' vacuum cleaner.
Manual suction vacuum cleaners, early 20th century
  • This recipe book, dated 1776, was compiled by Ann Phelps of Withybush House in Rudbaxton parish, Pembrokeshire. It includes a range of delicacies, sweet as well as savoury, together with snippets of household advice (such as how to clean steel stoves and a recipe for furniture polish). The author noted her recipes in an old execise book and the early pages include printed mathematical tables as well as a series of mathematical calculations in manuscript form. Withybush House, the author's home, was associated with the Martin/Phelps family from the seventeenth century until it was purchased by William Owen (builder and architect) during the nineteenth century.
Recipe Book owned by Ann Phelps of Withybush House, 1776 (mathematical tables, etc) [image 1 of 46]
  • This is a volume of recipes, herbal remedies and household hints, compiled during the mid-nineteenth century (c.1845) and owned by Lady de Rutzen of Slebech Hall (near Haverfordwest, Pembrokeshire). It contains an interesting assortment of recipes, including 'calves feet jelly', 'hare soup', goosebery wine and the intriguingly-named 'Staffordshire Yeomanry Pudding'. The herbal remedies include cures for 'corns', 'gnat bites' and 'sea sickness' as well as a medicine which was believed to alleviate whooping cough. Among the 'household hints' we find advice on the cleaning and varnishing of pictures, how 'to take spots out of Marble', how to 'prevent water penetrating boots or shoes', as well as recipes for homemade soap and the removal of iron mould from linen. Prior to the advent of modern, manufactured products, housekeepers and housewives had to devise their own cleaning agents, often using 'recipes', such as these, which had been handed down through the generations.
Recipe Book owned by Lady de Rutzen, Slebech Hall, c.1845 [image 1 of 31]
  • Gwyn Martin, a pharmacist in Aberystwyth, was also a talented amateur photographer.
'Spring, High Street, Aberystwyth' by Gwyn Martin, 1965
  • Photographed by Geoff Charles. Peggy Edwards, of Aberystwyth, sang on the radio during the 1950s, following her discovery by Mai Jones at the recording of a programme entitled 'Theatr y Talentau' (Theatre of Talents), held at the King's Hall, Aberystwyth.
Peggy Edwards, Wales's first female 'crooner', 10 October 1952