Halloween - the history of

Halloween is the one of the oldest festivals still celebrated today. It's one of the most popular celebrations, second only to Christmas. While millions of people celebrate Halloween without knowing its origins and myths, the history and facts of Halloween make this time even more fascinating.

Some people view Halloween as a time for fun, putting on costumes, trick-or-treating, and having themed parties. Others view it as a time of superstitions, ghosts, goblins and evil spirits that should be avoided at all costs.

As the Christian debate goes on, celebrating Halloween is a preference that is not always viewed as participating in an evil worship. Halloween is often celebrated with no reference to pagan rituals whatsoever.

Halloween is on October 31st, the last day of the Celtic calendar. It was originally a pagan festival, honoring the dead. Halloween was referred to as All Hallows Eve and dates back to over 2000 years ago.

All Hallows Eve is the evening before All Saints Day, which was created by Christians to convert pagans, and is celebrated on November 1st. The Catholic church honored saints on this designated day.

While there are many versions of the origins and old customs of Halloween, some remain consistent by all accounts. Different cultures view Halloween somewhat differently but traditional Halloween practices remain the same.

Halloween culture can be traced back to the Druids, a Celtic culture in Ireland, Britain and Northern Europe. Roots lay in the feast of Samhain, which was annually on October 31st to honor the dead.

Samhain signifies the end of the summer. Samhain was a harvest festival with huge sacred bonfires, marking the end of the Celtic year and beginning of a new one. Many of the practices involved in this celebration were fed on superstition.

The Celts believed the souls of the dead roamed the streets and villages at night. Since not all spirits were thought to be friendly, gifts and treats were left out to pacify the evil and ensure next years crops would be plentiful. This custom evolved into trick-or-treating.

If you need your custumes dry cleaned, laundered or ironed contact Iron Maids on 01622 870111, 01233 779009 or via iron-maids.co.uk

Wool clothing

When a sheep sheds its fleece this could be spun and woven into cloth. People soon realized that to kill the sheep for only its meat was a waste of food and material. The dog was probably the only animal to be domesticated before the sheep. People soon devised a method of producing clothing from the fleece. Even before 10,000 BC wool cloth was being spun and woven by the tribes of northern Europe. To spin it they took the wool in one hand and drew it out, twisting it into a thread with the fingers of the other hand. The result was a thick uneven yarn. Later, a crude spindle was developed by fitting a stone or clay ring to the end of a short wooden stick. The ring acted as a flywheel and enabled the drawn-out yarn to be wound on to the spindle. This method of spinning was used for thousands of years and is still used by peasant communities in various parts of the world.

Weaving is the criss-crossing of threads of wool to make cloth. The first loom consisted of a beam from which lengths of yarn were hung and weighted at the lower end by stones. The weft yarn was threaded to and fro across the suspended `warp' yarns in an over and under action, as with spinning, this system was used for thousands of years.

The Saxon invasions in the fifth century nearly destroyed the wool industry. But it is known that in the eighth century Britain was exporting woollen fabrics to the Continent and after the arrival of the Norman conquerors in 1066 the industry expanded. By the twelfth century wool was becoming England's greatest national asset. Cloth making was widespread, particularly in the large towns of southern and eastern England nearest the Continent. But the greatest wealth came from exports of raw wool. Kings and their ministers keenly appreciated the revenue that resulted from exports and export taxes-and for the power it gave to the king who could grant, or withdraw, concessions to the wool towns and to the industry. Weaver’s trade guilds, powerful for hundreds of years, were founded to guarantee good work by experienced craftsmen. The `Staple' was established-a mart where raw wool for sale abroad had, by law, to be sent and where the export tax levied by the king could be collected. The Staple was originally located in Flanders-an important textile manufacturing area-but was later withdrawn to England where a number of ports became Staple towns.

Despite setbacks of the plague and the long war with France during the 1300’s,raw wool exporting expanded, and so also did manufacturing of wool fabrics. This was becoming both specialized and localized. The West Country had three advantages-extensive sheep pastures, a supply of soft water for washing, scouring and dyeing, and water-power to drive milling machinery. Similarly, the Pennine districts of Yorkshire and Lancashire had soft water, and water power from steeply graded streams.
In East Anglia there was soft water but no hills or fast-running streams to provide power for `fulling' mills. Fulling, or milling, is a shrinking process which makes the fabric firmer and its surface more compact. Instead, East Anglia used the long, fine wool from its native sheep breeds to produce a cloth which did not require the fulling process. This was the type of cloth we today call 'worsted'-after the Norfolk village of Worstead. For four hundred years East Anglia dominated the worsted trade, with skills inherited from the Flemish settlers of 1331.
Cloth from English looms quickly achieved an international reputation. From being primarily a raw wool exporter, England became in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries a manufacturer and exporter of cloth. At the end of the fifteenth century England was `largely a nation of sheep farmers and cloth manufacturers'. The next two centuries saw continued expansion of the industry despite conflicts at home and abroad.

The Industrial Revolution of 1750-1850 caused upheaval. It ushered in new inventions stemming from the Lancashire cotton industry, to mechanize and speed dramatically the processes of spinning and weaving. Manufacturing methods, unchanged since the revival of the trade in the fourteenth century, were now superseded. Mechanization had been opposed in the past and it was again. In the Luddite riots of 1812 equipment was destroyed by organized bands of workers, who feared they would lose employment. But machinery won the day. The older industries in such areas as East Anglia, where opposition had been most bitter, declined and never recovered. They were overtaken by Yorkshire where machinery was more readily accepted. The younger industry jumped ahead and never lost its lead, supported by abundant supplies of cheap coal to generate steam and, later, electrical power. Other important manufacturing centres developed in Scotland, famed for its tweeds; and in the West Country which specialized in production of high quality woven carpets.

If you need your woollens dry cleaned, laundered or ironed contact Iron Maids on 01622 870111, 01233 779009 or via iron-maids.co.uk

Gift Vouchers

Although it still seems a while away, soon enough it will be time to start the Christmas planning process once more. Many of us will struggle to think of and find that perfect gift while the rest of us will rely on the good ole faithful gift voucher. So what’s the history behind this present saviour?

The first voucher was issued in 1932 - The Book Token

In 1936 The Boots Gift Token were launched and then later re-named Boots Gift Vouchers. In the early 1960’s saw the start of the consumer incentive with the introduction of the Green Shield Stamps. As sales began to slow, the original Green Shield stamp catalogue shops from which shoppers could select their well earned gifts which they had saved hard for, were re-branded Argos in July 1973

In 1972 the bonus bond gift voucher was the first ‘multi retailer’ gift voucher acquired by Grass Roots in 1982 but a couple of years later in 1974 Bemrose Booth produced Littlewoods Vouchers.

The 1980's saw the majority of high street retailers have a gift voucher scheme. High Street Vouchers launched multi-redemption vouchers targeted towards Christmas Savings. Customers could redeem these at Woolworths, Dixons, John Collier, Dewhurst and Cordon Blue.  The vouchers on offer today have over 75 retailers and 19,000 stores nationwide. Luncheon Vouchers produced in 1982 by Bemrose Booth were used at 200million per year. In 1983 the High Street Vouchers enter the Business-to-Business market. The first Theatre Token was launched in 1984 purely covering Theatres in the West end. It now covers over 235 theatres in the UK.

In 2000, Argos Business Solutions launched the first electronic Gift card in the B2B market called ‘A-Card’. This product is still around today and can be used to collect points which in turn can be spent on a vast range of items within Argos and / or Homebase stores. Four years later the High Street Voucher was re-branded to Love2Shop and coincided with the launch of Love2play and Love2travel. Now B2B sales of gift vouchers have reached 45% of the total market spend.

For a novel Christmas or birthday present, get an Iron Maids voucher! Contact us on 01622 870111, 01233 779009 or via iron-maids.co.uk

The Invention of The Washing Machine

Laundering by hand involves beating and scrubbing dirty cloth. It is hard work even with old fashioned utensils like washboards and soap to help.

Clothes washing technology developed as a way to reduce the drudgery of this scrubbing and rubbing process by providing an open basin or sealed container with paddles or fingers to automatically agitate the clothing. The earliest machines were hand operated. As electricity was not commonly available until around 1930, some early machines were operated by a low-speed single cylinder petrol engine. By the mid 1850s steam driven commercial laundry machinery were on sale in the United States and Great Britain. Technological advances in machinery for commercial and hospital laundries proceeded faster than domestic washing machines for several decades, especially in the UK. In the US there was more emphasis on developing machines for washing at home, as well as machines for the commercial laundry services market which were widely used in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

Because water often had to be carried, heated on a fire for washing, then poured into the tub, the warm soapy water was precious and would be reused over and over, first to wash the least soiled clothing, then to wash progressively more dirty laundry. While the earliest machines were constructed from wood, later machines made of metal permitted a fire to burn below the washtub, to keep the water warm throughout the day's washing.

Removal of soap and water from the clothing after washing was originally a separate process. After rinsing, the soaking wet clothing would be formed into a roll and twisted by hand to extract water. To help reduce this labour, the wringer mangle was developed, which uses two rollers under spring tension to squeeze water out of clothing and household linen. Each item would be fed through the wringer separately. The first wringers were hand operated, but were eventually included as a powered attachment above the washing machine tub. The wringer would be swung over the wash tub so that extracted wash water would fall back into the tub to be reused for the next wash load.

The modern process of removing water by spinning did not come into use until electric motors were developed. Spinning requires a constant high-speed power source, and was originally done in a separate device known as an extractor. A load of washed clothing would be transferred from the wash tub to the extractor basket, and the water spun out. These early extractors were often dangerous to use since unevenly distributed loads would cause the machine to shake violently. Many efforts have been made to counteract the shaking of unstable loads, first by mounting the spinning basket on a free-floating shock-absorbing frame to absorb minor imbalances, and a bump switch to detect severe movement and stop the machine so that the load can be manually redistributed. Many modern machines are equipped with a sealed ring of liquid that works to counteract any imbalances.

What is now referred to as an automatic washer was at one time referred to as a washer/extractor, which combines the features of these two devices into a single machine, plus the ability to fill and drain water by itself. It is possible to take this a step further, to also merge the automatic washing machine and tumble dryer into a single device, but this is generally uncommon because the drying process tends to use much more energy than using two separate devices; a combined washer/dryer not only must dry the clothing, but also needs to dry out the wash chamber itself.

Contact Iron Maids on 01622 870111 or 01233 779009 or via iron-maids.co.uk.