The Past

My quest for stories from laundrettes has led me down several different paths over the last few weeks or so. 

One of these was when I phoned the local records office. I think I’d been wondering vaguely about how many laundrettes there’d been in the Brighton & Hove in the past, compared to now. The person I spoke to suggested I join a Facebook group called Brighton Past - a resource the record office sometimes uses themselves, if they’re trying to find missing info or piece things together. 

The group has almost 50,000 members and sure enough, when I searched for ‘laundrettes’ in past posts, the topic had come up before a few times. It was lovely to read people’s snapshot laundrette memories...

“As a nipper I used to love going to the laundrette at the bottom of the hill to watch the "washersheens" going round. I was fascinated by washing machines and dustcarts as a kid.”

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“My nan used to go around the laundrette every night and sit and chat to the people that came in. She sat there because her electricity had been cut off because the wiring was dangerous and she couldn't afford to get her house rewired.”

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“As a little girl I remember the laundrette on the ground floor. It was immaculate, smelt beautiful and was a ritual with my grandmother.”

The most exciting find was this photograph, shared by Ash Sharma of him and his younger siblings outside of their parents’ laundrette, in 1969...

Nowadays, Wash-A-Rama is called Elm Grove Laundrette and is just down the road from where I live. The current laundrette is part of a small chain of five laundrettes around Brighton & Hove. But back in 1969, it was the first and only laundrette owned by the Sharma family and they all lived above it for a couple of years. 

I was lucky enough to have a zoom chat with Ash and his mum, Maureen, who now live in Florida. It turns out, Maureen and her husband Sardari had been the ones to turn the property at 12 Elm Grove into a laundrette back in 1968! Maureen explains:

“When we bought it, it was a sweets & tobacco shop… So we bought this property and we had a green-grocers shop there first.. But it didn’t do very well. 

So, my husband decided let’s stop... and he looked around and he saw that in the area, the closest launderette was quite some way along on Lewes Road.. It was quite some way away. So, we were on the bottom of the Grove there, and there was quite a large population behind us, up on the Islingword road… And he came up with the idea, he said “do you know what dear, I think a laundrette, that’s something that everybody uses.. Let’s do it!”

 

Sardari had a real entrepreneurial spirit. Part of his motivation to work for himself came from wanting to escape the prejudices he faced as an Indian immigrant in 1960s England. 

“He always had the imagination and to all of us it just seemed impossible,” Ash laughs.

“He’d say “you’re laughing at me now,” to my mum and us kids, “you think i’m joking, but I’m telling you the truth, I will do this.”

For the four years that the family were there, they only had a repair man in once. Sardari watched how to do it and from then on did all the repairs himself early in the morning, before going to work all day as an electrician and coming back to deep clean the laundrette last thing at night. Meanwhile, Maureen - in her early twenties - answered the laundrette bell whenever it rang and helping customers with whatever was needed, whilst simultaneously looking after three young children in the flat above where they all lived. 

“I remember him telling me, if he wasn’t able to have done the repairs himself, that would have been such an expensive part of the business that he doubts we would have had the success that we had.” 

As it was, Wash-a-rama was a great success… Not only is it still there today, but it was the springboard for many future ventures for the family. Ash explains:

“My dad started many businesses during his lifetime.. The laundrette provided him the money to start a plastic bag making company - which he did in a very modest way. He bought a second hand bag making machine..and would run it on weekends.. Still working as an electrician, and we still had the laundrette… Then when the three day week came along, he got permission to work an extra day because he was making bags for the hospitals.”

Sardari and Maureen built that business up and eventually they owned Sussex Polythene in Shoreham, and went on to own larger businesses both here and abroad. 

(picture from inside Wash-a-rama - “It was quite snazzy for the 60s”)

The family lived above the laundrette, in a very small living space where they all shared a bedroom for a few years. Ash has horror-movie-esque memories from childhood, of the journey to reach the laundrette from upstairs, passing through the back of the dryers:

“If you went downstairs, you had to go through this dark corridor like something out of Dr Who.. the lights were always off and there were these machines just constantly running.. And there’d be wires.. You’d see the occasional flash of light..

So I’m like 4 or 5 years old.. I’d come down the steps, I’d see this long dark corridor with all this machinery... and I imagined all sorts... It was scary!

I’m sure health and safety these days, they’d be way more protected than it was in the 60s… but it was just an open dark corridor filled with driving machinery.. And it was loud.. And constant, it was always on.”

Maureen was also often worried about safety:

“There was a generator in the kitchen, it was all very loud. And in the summer months, very hot.. Because the heat from the dryers would rise.. And the bedroom was above where the dryers were, so it would get quite uncomfortable … and of course, for me, I always worried about the danger of being on top of the dryer because they were gas.”

Although the laundrette was self-service, there was a bell to ring and Maureen often ended up spending a lot of time there. Sometimes she’d end up looking after more than people’s washing...

“There was one woman who I knew lived around the back, off of Islingword Road… and she had a young child, in the pram, in the laundrette.. And one day, she left the child there.

I suppose she was having a hard time of it… y’know, she was up to here.. I think she had a hard life.

He had a harness, strapped to the pram.. Bit less than a toddler but not a real little baby…

So I had to look after him for the rest of the day! I didn’t want to go to the police or anything because I didn’t want to get her into trouble.

But I found it extremely hard.. He was a big baby.. When your children grow a bit, you forget how hard it is when they’re little and you’re having to pick them up all day long. I had that little fellow all that day.

But I knew whose child he was, cos I'd seen him there before.. So I just looked after him.. And she came at the end of the day and said ‘have you got my baby?’ and I handed the little fellow over.”

Maureen told me a few other stories, like the one about the lady from Park Crescent who she knew just came to Wash-a-rama to get a look at Sardari working!

“My husband was a very good looking man.. Women used to look at him... But he had no clue. He was a beautiful human being, inside and out.”

Back in the days of Wash-a-rama, the rest of Elm Grove looked quite different. Back in 1968, the laundrette was nestled between an array of local shops. Now, it’s next to a bike shop and there’s a vape shop up the road, but most of the other properties are residential. Ash reflects on this: 

“All the shops that come and go, all the high street stores ...how that's changed from the 60s through to today.. And I always thought that was fascinating.. How there was this laundrette that my mum and dad started in the late 60s and it’s still there. It’s still needed.

And all those other shops.. The butchers, the newsagents, the antiques and toy shops that used to be there.. They come, they go… but the laundrettes still there, I think that's fascinating”

It was a pleasure to speak to Ash and Maureen, and lots to think about… 

I spoke to Wendy at Soapbox about it one morning and it made her remember an image a long-time customer had given her - a newspaper article from approximately 40 years ago about the family who used to run what is now Soapbox:

 

It’s been fascinating to delve into the past and has added another dimension to my investigations.. I’ve been working on some poetry inspired by the conversations I’ve been having over the last few months, and hope to add a historical viewpoint inspired by Wash-a-rama and Ash and Maureen’s stories. 

Watch this space! Lots to catch up on, so I’ll be back soon...