'Help Win the War on the Kitchen Front'

Clothing coupon book. In 1941, clothing was added to the list of rationed items, as was coal, gas and electricity in 1942. A ‘Make do and Mend’ scheme was sanctioned by the Board of Trade in 1942 and pamphlets were issued advising people on methods for lengthening the life of their clothes. Trafford Local Studies Collection, cat. ref. 96683422.

Plans for rationing began in 1936, and became a reality in January 1940. Ration books were used to limit the purchase of foods such as meat, butter and sugar. As the war continued additional foodstuffs were rationed, including jam and cheese in 1941, and tea and margarine in 1943. One Flixton resident remembered ‘We were issued with ration books and we had to work out how to make 2oz butter, 2oz marg and 1 egg last each us one week.’

There were Food Offices in Altrincham, Sale, Urmston, and Stretford to administrate rationing in the local areas. Altrincham Food Office, situated on the corner of Woodlands Road and Burlington Road, was responsible for 25 local parishes, including Mobberley, Mere, Partington, and Dunham Massey. In 1943, they launched ‘flying squads’: officials who distributed ration books throughout rural villages, to save country dwellers from having to travel into Altrincham. On 24 May 1943 the Manchester Evening News reported that ‘About 40,000 books and cards have to be distributed in the area.’

Food rationing ended completely in 1954, with meat being the last item to be de-rationed.

Dig for Victory

Trafford Local Studies Collection, cat. ref. SAL/10/2/4/3/3/1.

To increase food production the government initiated the ‘Dig for Victory’ campaign, encouraging the public and local authorities to grow fruit and vegetables in any land available to them. Leaflets were issued giving advice on how to garden productively.

Urmston led the way and were so successful in their domestic cultivation that they offered a £5 prize to a charity sponsored by any town that could surpass their effort. The ‘Urmston fiver’ went to Gravesend, in Kent. In a report to the Ministry of Agriculture in 1940, the two towns were producing the most home-grown food per household in the country. Mr J. W. Sharp, a blind piano tuner of Link Avenue, in Urmston, was awarded the Minister of Agriculture’s ‘Dig for Victory’ diploma for cultivating such a fine allotment.

He digs his plot, sows the seed, keeps the land free of weeds and wheels home his produce with unerring skill. He also maintains the garden attached to his house where he had built a green house containing the only vine in the district. His allotment is a war-time model containing, as it does, a large store of winter vegetables.

- Stretford News, 24 August 1940

Letter relating to the accounts of a British Restaurant in Altrincham, 25 May 1946. Trafford Local Studies Collection, cat. ref. ALT/10/2/4/1/1.

British Restaurants

British Restaurants were communal canteens set up in 1940, initially to feed the urban working poor and to improve the quality of their diet. They provided a meal at cost price without the need for ration coupons. The Ministry of Food called them ‘an entirely new development since the War’. They proved very popular and continued to function after the end of the war. A typical meal consisted of soup, meat and two veg, followed by a sweet, such as a steamed pudding or rice pudding.

They have been cited by historian Nadja Durbach as an important cultural development, loosening women’s ties to the kitchen and opening up a narrative on traditional domestic roles.

Local authorities got to work setting up their own British Restaurants, often converting buildings previously used for other purposes. A British Restaurant was opened on Ashburton Road in Trafford Park that could cater for 500 diners at one time. A bombed building in Stretford’s Victoria Park was also converted. Urmston’s surveyor E.L. Leeming designed a new building for the purpose, but it was to be constructed using salvaged materials from homes destroyed in the Blitz.

Urmston people, lunching at the new British Restaurant which is being built near the station, may find themselves entering through their own front door, looking though their own window frames, or walking on familiar floorboards.

- Manchester Evening News, 12 September 1941