Being one of the last members of staff remaining in the cold, empty Lune buildings in 1983/84, it was sad to think that such a well known and long respected laundry was finished. Gone were the starched-overalled and capped workers. Gone were the days of sheets drying on the railway embankment and the yard full of washing lines. Gone too were the old hampers and the boxes with tissue paper layered garments. All in the distant past.

Dismantled were the giant washers and dryers where clothes from the large houses with a tradesman's entrance for deliveries, and the 'two up two down' terraces, were all washed and dried together. Cockroaches, fleas, rats, mice and feral cats had all shared the workplace too, watching as huge jugs of orange were distributed during hot weather, until the doors finally closed on the once-proud L'une - THE one - Laundry.

MARGARET THOMPSON
(ex-Lune Laundry telephone operator)

February 2008