General Chat

Gwyn, whatever made you think I 'may' start a collection? :-S

I have quite a few old bottles, and the ginger beer bottle could do with a 'friend' :-D

Also have an empty shelf......

Do I also admit to (yet again) hearing dead/dying trees creaking?
The people I'm with don't initially hear it, until I point it out. (so it's not my imagination)
Am I, instead of getting more hard of hearing as I get older, becoming 'attuned' to dying trees? :-S

If anyone wants to be more precise about the date, the bottle is embossed with E Williams, New Model Dairies Ltd Southampton.

They were established in 1830, were based in Vaudrey Road, Shirley, Southampton, their horses were stabled in Stratton road Shirley, and by 1959 were Brown & Harrison Model Dairies.
Someone mentions, in the 1940's that the dairies were soon to amalgamate.

Just trying to find out about the dairy elicited some fascinating memories (online) of Southampton, including memories of Benny Hill and his dad :-D

That's great Maggie.

Are you going to keep it....Maybe start a collection?

Well done for probably preventing an injury to an animal, at some point.

Gwyn

I went for a tramp in the forest today - and yes, he's getting fed up with me ;-)

We were walking through some woodland that was, one can only say, past it's best. Dead trees everywhere and quite a few dead trees held up only by the branches of nearby trees or the ivy that smothered them.

Anyhoo, I noticed a glass bottle lying in the leaf mould. On closer inspection - it was a milk bottle, with the name of the dairy on it. I also noticed it wasn't of the 'modern' shape. Ironic, I said, when they're about to stop delivering milk in bottles.

I picked it up - not wanting a pony/deer to stand on it, and bought it home. Got home, went on the internet to see if I could work out how old it was.

This milk bottle is from the late 1940's, early 1950's. The dairy it came from amalgamated with another dairy about that time.

It had been lying there for over 50 years - about the time the trees were planted!!

I love the internet
:-D :-D

I must be one of the last people in my area who still gets milk delivered.
Since daughter moved out, we have cut down on the amount that we use and reduced what the milkman brings.

I am going to cancel it this week
I have just discovered that a carton of milk from the supermarket costs £1 and I have been paying £2.48 plus a £1 weekly tip for the same stuff!

and Margaret Thatcher - milk snatcher :-P

free school milk with cardboard tops.........

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

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

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 :-)

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 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

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)

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

another end of a era :-( :-(

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

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.

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

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

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