Millbay Laundry

From the collection of

Established in 1992, the South West Film & Television Archive collection spans from 1893 to the present day containing more than 250,000 items. Formed from a variety of depositors, including broadcast news and programmes material from the Westward and TSW archive. In 2018 the archive collection transferred to The Box in Plymouth.

Millbay Laundry

The Box
Plymouth
1960-01-01
Sound

Help keep your relationship on track by outsourcing your laundry!

This is an advert for Plymouth-based Millbay Laundry, Cleaning and Dyeing Co Ltd who ran laundry services in many locations in the South West of England. It stereotypes the woman and her pile of ironing but offers the perfect solution: Hooray for Millbay they will launder leaving you with more free time to hug. This is from the 1960s when the company had two hundred and fifty high street branches and vans and agents.

The Millbay Laundry factory started out small in 1885 and in 1896 a factory was built on Millbay Road. It grew into quite a business with large public contracts but with the boom did not last. With a rise in people's standard of living, the growth of new domestic appliances along with easier fabrics and efficient detergents, the need for laundry services declined. Kneels of Exeter took over the Millbay Laundry business in 1972.

Near Your Local Cinema

Local goods for local people! Screen advertising wasn’t all national brands and chain stores.

Purpose-built cinemas began appearing around Britain shortly before WWI, booming in popularity during the War and developing into the ‘picture palaces’ of the 1920s - when adverts jostled for space alongside newsreels before the main feature. Local businesses were quick to see the potential of a big screen and a captive audience to promote their wares.

While they didn’t have access to the budgets of the national brands, regionally-specific businesses had the benefit of that personal touch. Products and services evolved over time, but that scratchy ad for your local Indian restaurant, so integral to the cinema-going experience into the 1990s, had its roots in the booming entrepreneurship of the industry many decades before.