General Chat

Dear All

Hello


Earlier this week, the firm Dairy Crest announced that their last glass milk bottle plant is to close.

In 1975, 94% of milk was put into glass bottles.

By 2012, this was just 4%.

"I can remember that wonderful clinking sound of the milk bottles arriving,"
says consumer historian Robert Opie.

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By the 1990s, the deregulation of the British milk industry and the decision by supermarkets to sell milk in plastic containers changed everything.

The delivery of milk by the regular milkman on the doorstep was the quintessential start to the morning.

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Who remembers the comedy song "The The Fastest Milkman in the West"
by comedian Benny Hill in 1970?


Who recalls saving milk bottle tops for charity?

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Take gentle care
Best wishes
Elizabeth,
xx

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8e1xvyTdBZI

:-) :-) :-)

I can remember when about 12 going to the local dairy and helping doing something with the bottles, I can't remember what we did though. Although I can 'see' the bottles whizzing round being washed etc. I think we may have helped to load them onto the machine that moved them around. Can't see H&S allowing that these days.

I had not heard of this announcement, Elizabeth, although we do still have a doorstep delivery from Dairy Crest.
I will have to watch the dates on them. We have a mix of types of milk and sizes and the 1pint glass bottles always show a longer date on the tops.

We always saved the washed tops for many years as children.... either for charity collections of foil, but previous to that we'd bend them over a thimble to make bell shapes to hang in our bedroom at Christmas.

Gwyn

Like Gwyn, we also have a doorstep delivery with glass bottles and foil tops.

It's a shame that the bottling plant is to close. Does this mean that we will have to have plastic bottles? Is that as energy efficient as washing out the glass ones to refill?

TBH - the writing was on the wall when supermarkets were able to sell milk for considerably less than the Roundsman could. The doorstep sales is probably represented by the 4% of consumption in glass bottles.

We also haven't had any announcement from Dairy Crest.......



waiting.................

We too still have a doorstep delivery with the glass bottles.Funnily enough we have recently been thinking of stopping it and just buying at the Supermarket as it is so much cheaper .But we have always wanted to support the local Milkman.

We're the same, Jane.

I buy extra from a supermarket, but support the local milkman, who delivers around 4am. 3 days a week.

Gwyn

Our Milkman delivers sometimes before 3am !!!!.I only know this because the security light goes on ,and I then have to have a peek out the window to see what has made it go on.I always think it might be a fox or some other night time creature.But it is just the good old Milkman :-D

I remember when has children we came up to stay with our grandparents in London nan once a week along with her milk she had this bottled orange drink delivered, I can still taste it sometimes

That's really sad news for me Elizabeth as I used to be the manager of a Dairy Crest Distrubution Centre in Cambridge. Over twenty years ago the big supermarkets were telling the dairies what they were prepared to pay for milk, not the dairies saying what they wanted for it. The milkmen all sold a range of other goods too including Christmas Hampers, turkeys etc.

when I was a child our milk was delivered by the local farmer and Ginger the horse and cart - milk was in churns and it was measured out into the jug my mother left on the doorstep - if I had to go up the farm for milk I waited in the dairy while he ran it through a cooler thing and put it in a bottle with a cardboard top - the top had a small hole in the middle for a straw presumably. We used the cardboard tops to make woollen bobbles

another end of a era :-( :-(

Dear All

Hello

Very pleased to read of your memories.

Thank you all very much for adding to the post.

Here is the full link for anyone interested:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-29327881


Take gentle care
With best wishes
Elizabeth,
xx

According to a neighbour, Dairy Crest already deliver in plastic bottles.
We only found out a week or so ago - the normal rounds man is recovering form an operation and the replacement delivered to someone who didn't have an order. The neighbour was trying to work out who the 2 pints belonged to!

We both agreed that we were keeping him in employment. Of the 11 households she'd asked, only 3 of us had deliveries. 30 years ago when we moved in, every house had doorstep deliveries.

It would be a shame if they stopped altogether. The only time there wasn't a delivery was when the snow was 3 foot deep. Once the main road was passable, he'd park up at the top of one of the side roads so that people could collect their order (and their neighbours)

When I was a child, we lived near a dairy farm.

One of my "jobs" was to go to the dairy with a jug, and get it filled with milk.

:-D

My Grt grandfather and later my grandfather owned a Dairy in Poplar, London!

Great grandfather’s first job was as a Cowman in Kent before he moved to London. After a few years working for another Dairy, by 1896 he had opened his own on the Isle of Dogs. As his occupation in 1891 was also given as Cowman, there must have been dairy cows in the back yard!

After his premature death in 1903, the business was run by his wife with at least 2 employees and then my Grandfather until they were bombed out in the Blitz. The site was purchased by Express Dairies, one of the large companies.

We’ve some lovely photos of the horse and cart complete with urns, with the wife’s initials on the side. According to both my father and his cousin, the urns used to be scalded out then taken to the railway station to be replaced with full ones. Customers used to have milk ladled into their own containers.

When I was just a lad our milk was delivered from the Co-op by horse and cart, my Gran/Mum would buy plastic milk tokens every Saturday from the Co-op and the number of tokens they put out, told Ben our milkman, how many pints you wanted.

If my memory serves me right, mothers with young children, were given a book similar to the old pension book, containing vouchers for a certain amount of free milk - the thing that I remember most was being allowed to feed the heels of the bread to Bessie the horse that pulled the milk cart :-)

I recall with fond memories the milk being frozen in the winter with the tops sticking over the top of the frozen cream. Ah, lovely days. xx

and bluetits pecking holes in the tops to get at the milk :-D