The wooden fridge – yes that’s right “WOODEN – FRIDGE” which in my mind is just WRONG! (A bit like garlic – bread!).
As a museum assistant my duties mainly consist of working in the public areas, but occasionally I get to visit the museum store. And, several years ago whilst making such a visit I got told about our wooden fridge, which I just had to see.
Unfortunately I have never seen it exhibited, probably due to it not fitting in with any temporary exhibition theme. So when I was asked to pick an object to `virtually` exhibit I thought others might also like to see what a wooden fridge looks like. Those people of more mature years than me were probably very familiar with the wooden fridge, as indeed I grew up with a wooden TV!
The thermostatic control knob is also of interest with `cold` `colder` and `coldest` not being the most technical of terms.
Overall it’s not a thing of beauty, and probably never was (how do you put fridge magnets on it?). It certainly hasn’t got better with age, but I like it!
I will now hand over to our curator to give you the `facts about wooden fridges`!
Adrian Howard - Museum Assistant
For those lucky enough to afford a fridge in the 1920s and 1930s the wooden cabinet was all you could get. The modern domestic refrigerator was first introduced into Britain in the 1920s and it was housed in a wooden cabinet. Electrolux made the first metal cabinet fridges in the early 1930s.
Today we can’t imagine living without a fridge, and in the 1920s and 1930s people had to shop for food almost daily because they couldn’t keep it cool. Fridges didn’t take off in Britain until 1934, following an unusually hot summer; by 1939 two hundred thousand homes had one. They were very different to today’s fridges, the most popular design, made by BTH, was nicknamed the ‘beehive’ because it had a large cylindrical cooling unit on the top.
After the Second World War (1939 – 1945) fridges were very much in demand. Another very hot summer in 1959 persuaded many homeowners to buy one; they were designed into newly planned kitchens built during the housing boom of the 1950s and 1960s – interestingly in the 1960s the wooden cabinet made a comeback! Ever since they have been an important part of kitchen design. Now that we tend to shop once a week at supermarkets and we buy more products which need to be kept cool for days or weeks, refrigerators are essential.
Norwich based company Boulton and Paul made this wooden fridge in the 1940s. The company started out life as an Ironmongers in the late 1700s and moved into aircraft production in the early to mid 1900s, producing planes for both world wars. Following the Second World War, aircraft continued to be built in Wolverhampton whilst the Norwich factory produced high quality kitchenware.
John Whitaker - Social History Curator
