NextBackThe 'Dairy' was in two parts. The first containing a double galvanised washing sink resembling half an oil drum. Hot water was occasionally available from the boiler behind the house. Next to the sink was peculiar but practical double brush affair used for cleaning out the milk bottles which were all cleaned by hand. The first bottles I remember were sealed with a round cardboard top which was pressed into the enlarged bottle flange, this was subsequently replaced in later years by the more familiar crimped foil top in either gold or silver, depending on what went in it. The bottles were shoved onto the revolving brushes two at a time until all the fungus and white milk stains were removed. They were then rinsed in disinfected water to a semblance of hygiene. It was a regular occurrence for the odd bottles to just gently fall apart in your hands, the resulting shower of blood was usually collected in the disinfected water! Against the back wall was the sterilising cabinet, a huge cavernous affair into which was piled all the accoutrements of the milking process for a real good 'thrushing'. Steam again came from the outside boiler.
Down a couple of stone steps and you were in the dairy proper. The stone slab on the left, the adjacent hand bottler, the milk cooler on the right and the fridge behind that. On the facing wall, sitting on a high shelf were an assortment of dairy miscellanies. Filters for the cooler, spare buckets, odds and sods and an array of disgusting milk bottles, each filled with rapidly decomposing samples of milk separating off into its various component parts. The slab seemed to serve no other purpose than to act as a handy table. The bottling machine required the constant attention of a small boy to feed it with empty bottles, soon to join their filled friends in an adjacent wire framed milk crate. The cooler was simplicity in itself. A generous container on the top with a double cotton gauze filter spewed milk in a controlled dribble down the corrugated cooling surface via a rudely cast brass tap. Now to further increase the profit margins and to do their bit for the war effort in increasing milk supplies, a small number of enterprising farmers would engineer a small leak so as to bulk up the volume a bit. The same result could also be arrived at by just chucking half a bucket of tap water in with the milk! The whole system was extremely agricultural in both its conception and operation. I remember that in those days the recovery hospital at Blackwell always had a good supply of patients suffering from tuberculosis!
