Clothes Airer

[akeighleylass]

Come on you knowledgeable lot, tell me the name of the clothes airer that used to hang in the kitchen from the ceiling and was lowered up and down with a pulley and rope?

I can't for the life in me remember what it was and they were in just about every kitchen in Keighley when I was a child!

Anne

[mukhook]

a creel

[barcroftlad]

You are talking about a bread flake, pronounced in dialect as bree-adflake, a type of creel. Originally used for hanging/drying out overnight the mixture for Haver bread/ oat cakes, which were long oval shapes. Cheers.

[parkwoodgirl]

I had a creel for many years - when my children were still living at home I had five beds to change, I would wash the sheets and throw them over the three slats - pull it up to the ceiling and they would be ready for ironing the next day. With the price of domestic fuel these days I wouldn't be surprised if they make a comeback.

[sean1981]

Added to this thread (could also go in words used locally) is the word my grandmother used for a clothes horse.

'Wintredge' is sounded like. Winter hedge one assumes was when they could not use a hedge out side as they did in summer.

This was used in Oxenhope and I know someone from Hebden Bridge who used it too.

[fsharpminor]

We called the folding wooden frames 'clothes horses', but not sure if the pulley ones were called this as well

[elfremar]

In our house the clothes airer on the ceiling was called the rack,and the one that stood on the floor was the winter hedge or clothes horse.

[harrier]

I remember mother referring to the 'donkey' for drying the washing, was this the airer or the creel? Usually every body in Hainworth Lane hung their washing outside on a clothes line which was strund across the Lane. When a car / lorry came up or down the Lane, someone had to go outside to hold up the prop even higher so that the vehicle could pass underneath the line without catching on the clothes or the line!

[fsharpminor]

This was also a problem at the back of 37-57 Malsis Rd, which were two story at the front but three at the back. Washing was always strung across the back road, but coal lorries use to deliver, and nearly everyone seemed to have a different coalman. Coal dust and clean washing do not mix. Of course there were other deliveries, and the dustbin men also. It was one way so they had to go along to reach no 37, then reverse back.

[rainbow332]

when i was a youngster we had the same thing hanging from the kitchen ceiling my mother called it an airing rack it kept the clothes out of the way it used to be my job to pull it up and down if i was around.
T K

[Gaffa]

We had one in our house on Beeches Terrace (as did everyone else).
We also called it the clothes rack and the folding thing
that went in front of the fire was the clothes horse.

Gaffa

[barcrofter]

I went to Pickard's hardware store this morning, while I was waiting to be served I noticed they were selling creels with ropes and pulleys, they must be coming back!!