Do you remember this Grantham building?

The Grantham Steam Laundry opened back in the 1870s, at a time when steam-powered washing felt thoroughly modern, and for the best part of a century it took in the town’s washing, both from households and from businesses. During the Second World War, the steel-roofed steam room found itself doing double duty as an air-raid shelter for the workers and for families in the little Belton Lane cottages next door.

The business was later taken on by Fenland Laundries, and it kept the coppers going well into the twentieth century before the old buildings were finally cleared, with photographs surviving from as late as 1983.

The site sat close to what is now Queen Elizabeth Park, and plenty of locals still link that history to the big wooden peg standing in the park today. The council has said the peg was really meant to spark a bit of debate rather than mark the laundry itself, but it remains a fond little nod to all those years of washing on Belton Lane.