Inside the laundry, or washhouse as it was more commonly called, and in the yard outside, can be seen most of the equipment necessary for the arduous Victorian washday. A copper is built into the corner which needed a well-stoked fire in order to heat the water drawn from the well, which has recently been excavated and re-opened (outside the back door of the shop).
The
Laundry
The hot water would then have been used to wash the clothes in either a wooden wash tub, or dolly tub, or a hand-operated washing machine of which examples are on display. The shower hanging in the yard is an example of several which the Burns filled with hot sea water and hung up in the cow shed in summer. They were advertising ' lodgings with hot baths ' in 1848.