WELCOME to your state-of-the art kitchen as it would have been 59 years ago.

Apparently the welcome in those days was extended only to women.

If an Adver supplement called Your Dream Kitchen from late March of 1957 is anything to go by, men were forbidden entry to the mysterious room from which food emerged.

The purpose of the supplement was mostly to extol the virtues of modern technology.

We wrote: “The most important room in any house is the kitchen, but for many years now, when building new homes, planners have ignored this fact and, while providing living rooms and sitting rooms, the room in which the housewife spends most of her time has been inconveniently small and ill-equipped.

“Now, with more and more women – with the aid of machines instead of maids – having to look after their own homes, the kitchen is returning to the place it occupied a few generations ago, the heart of the house.”

Advertisers included shops such as Teesdale and Jones in Fleet Street, CE Barkham Ltd in Victoria Road, McIlroys in Regent Street and SG Huband and Sons Ltd in Wootton Bassett.

All were Hoover stockists, and the firm was promoting its Mark III Washing Machine with Power Operated Wringer and Water Heater.

Consisting of a large tub topped by a fearsome-looking mangle with an electric motor, it was priced at a little over £78 in an era when £12 a week was a respectable wage.

Hoover was also marketing its adjustable steam or dry iron at slightly under £5.

McIlroys’ kitchen department offered what it referred to as the famous Hollins Supersafe – “The complete, ideal cabinet for your kitchen.” Available in cream, green, white, blue and red, and with plastic handles in various hues, it came in at a little over £27 for the basic model and a little under £29 for the luxury option with a foldaway Formica-topped table.

As kitchen trends shifted to fully-fitted over the following years, such units were consigned in their millions to rubbish tips. The few surviving examples are highly prized by connoisseurs of all things vintage.

Another advert in the supplement, for a £45 cooker called the Flavel Envoy, was headed: “Look Girls – it’s the cooker we women designed!”

The women in question, assuming they existed at all, were probably the wives of executives who were asked to fill in a brief questionnaire. The Southern Electricity service chimed in with an advert showing a drawing of a happy little girl saying: “My Mummy is a marvellous cook – but of course…she has a modern ELECTRIC COOKER.”