What do you remember about how your grandma used to live?

I wish someone would collate all these into a book!

I remember the little old lady, my 'London nanny', dad's mum, came to live with us to childmind my little sister while mum and dad were at work. I recall her telling me about standing in the street watching Queen Victoria's funeral. That was in 1901! She also thrilled me with stories of 'Penny Bazaars' where nothing cost more than a penny.

My DH's maternal grandparents lived in a railway tied house where there was no electricity upstairs and they bathed in a hand filled zinc bath in front of the fire.

In 1967 I visited my great grandmother's house in the West of Ireland. She brought up eight children in a two room cottage with no power or running water. Tea was brewed from a blackened kettle over the peat fire. My cousins were out on the farm cutting peat for the winter and the loo was a bucket in the barn.

And I am 'only' 63!

My paternal grandmother in Ireland used to use a corner of a clean tea towel soaked with milk to clean her face. She had beautiful pale skin.
I didn’t know her for long as we moved back to the UK, but I think my younger sister has the same pale unlined skin, along with really dark hair.

Happysexagenarian thank you so much for the info., you've shared on this lovely thread. MacCulloch & Wallace will now be on my contact list! Derry & Toms closed down many years ago but the roof garden is Listed.

My nanny lived in a cottage on a hill. She had an outside toilet. She used to have her big front door key hanging on a piece of string over the letterbox so anyone visiting just put there hand threw letterbox and grabbed key that was dangling in piece of string to let themselves in. She used to sleep with candle wicks in her hair at night to curl her hair.She had a big arga I’m the kitchen where all the undies would hang off the doors drying. Monday was washing day she would do it in the yard with her mangle it took all day.

No memories of my father's parents I don't think I ever met them.

We lived with my maternal grandparents in a 1930s flat on a busy London street. They had lived there for roughly 15 years before I was born. The flat had two bedrooms, quite a smart bathroom and a small, dark kitchen with a very old gas cooker. Heating was an open coal fire in the living room and small gas fires in the bedrooms. My Nan (born in 1880) made it her mission to ensure I was raised to be a lady. Good manners were of the highest importance, and from a very early age I was taught to embroider, sew and crochet, skills she considered essential for a lady. Thus began my passion for handcrafts. Nan would regularly take me into London on the bus to buy fabrics at MacCulloch & Wallace (near Oxford Street), where she was offered a seat and everything was brought to her for approval. Customer service indeed! I still buy from them, albeit online now. Before we went home we would have tea at Derry & Toms roof garden. I wonder if it's still there? Nan was always very smartly dressed and bought quality clothes in the sales and altered them to her taste. She was a bit of a flirt if there was a good looking man around, and she could be very sharp tongued and critical mostly of other women, or my mum. My GF was a quiet man, always walked with a stick (rheumatism) and enjoyed following aĺl sports on radio or TV, especially rugby. My GPs looked after me while my mum worked, grandad taking me for walks and Nan teaching me to read and write, I was fluent at both by the time I was four. Sadly my GM developed dementia till eventually she didn't know who I was. My GPs were probably the biggest influence on my life and I still recall things they said and did and talk about them frequently.

Her husband died on the kitchen table during an operation to remove his appendix.

My maternal gran always seemed old. She reminded me of Queen Victoria, long grey hair pinned up in a bun,dressed in black and sitting regally on her chair waited on by her daughters.
Widowed at 40 while expecting her 10th child they had to leave the lovely seafront house and move to a townhouse in Derry city centre.

My Paternal Grandparents lived in a beautiful Georgian townhouse overlooking a river and next to a church. He was a darling, she was not. He was terribly kind, she less so.
My best memories of her involved visits when she would show me all her glass and china ornaments and allow me to use a china musical mug which played "Uncle Tom Cobley" - and she taught me all the words. Worst memory was hearing her criticising my Mother and seeing her kill a hen for Sunday lunch.

My maternal Grandparents were so lovely. They lived at the bottom end of the market town in the Wye Valley in a lovely timbered house which had originally been a coaching inn. It was not in the best of condition, but very comfortable. We went to live with them and at various times, in parts of the very big house, there was my widowed Aunt with her toddler son, an Uncle with his Wife and small son, and a spinster Aunt - who would spend hours teaching me things and from whom I picked up my love of animals and gardening. Other Aunts and Uncles would turn up for meals which were always from a table groaning with home-cooked food. A Great Uncle in the town was a Fish and Game dealer and Granddad grew all his own vegetables. There were hens in the yard, one Uncle kept geese and pigs and beyond that a big vegetable garden. My earliest memories were of gas mantles throughout the house, endless stairs to attic rooms where swallows had made nests having flown through a broken pane and where Granddad stored all his apples in twists of paper, and kept sacks of potatoes. I would climb the stairs to bed from a warm kitchen where there was a big range and a copper for bath nights, followed by my Mum who carried a warming pan with coals from the range to warm my bed in a freezing bedroom. I had a candlestick with a lit candle - maybe around 6 years old - and I would always be spooked by the dancing shadows the candle created on the dark walls as we went upstairs. No bathroom. An outside privy with a wodge of newspaper squares on a string, but it did have the most wonderful wooden polished seat. Awful on cold nights, but we all had chamber pots upstairs (po's as they were called. I can never pronounce 'pots' like that in France now without thinking of what the word meant in our home all those years ago!)

My Granddad had fierce dark eyebrows, but lovely twinkly Irish grey eyes and a sense of humour. His serge work trousers were always buckled with a wide leather belt and he wore a collarless shirt in the house. Grandma was a gentle soul but with a very determined nature and a wonderful sense of fun. She had a best room in which there was a pretty cabinet filled with bone china cups and saucers. I now have these and have such pleasure in using them for visiting friends. Sadly she succumbed to cancer before my teens; Granddad later fell down the dark staircase due to his Glaucoma, and he broke his neck and died. I missed him dreadfully.

Life was hard for both of them. They worked from dawn until dusk, cleaning and laying fires, growing, preparing and bottling vegetables and doing housework with nothing but brooms and carpet sweeper, heavy buckets and a mangle and no electricity. She heated big flat irons on the range for the ironing. The milk was delivered by a local farmer and his horse and cart. He'd climb the steps, open the front door and fill the empty jugs from a churn and ladle from the cart. The jugs were covered in those little net things with beads on to keep out the flies. Meat was in a meat safe, in a draughty hallway with stone floors, as was butter in a dish of cold water. I was allowed to walk to the dairy next to the milking shed across the field with a small churn if we ran out of milk. I can still remember the Pish-tickkaah, Pish-tickkaah sound of the machine in the milking parlour and the smell of the cows as they stood happily munching. I would also go to the grocers on the corner and pick up some untipped cigarettes for Granddad and, occasionally, take a jug along the street to the little window of the Pub for his jug of ale. Grandma would bake bread and I too had an Aunt who, as MissDeke described on this thread, used to grip the bread saw and cut slices towards her own body. I was both enthralled and horrified. It was like a magic trick, I thought she would be sawn in half! There was no traffic - Great Granddad had owned a horse and carriage. But the blacksmith's dog - which would sleep soundly in the middle of the road - would have to get up and wander out of the way of the one truck which visited the blacksmith each working day. Grandma and Granddad and their big extended family made the first years of my life extremely happy. I have lovely memories and some super black and white photographs.

My paternal grandmother had a hard life as an adult, she was widowed when my father was 12, so 1938 and as a woman was not granted the tenancy of the farm they lived on. her earlier life was much happier and although I talked to her about her love of art and school days, I wish I'd talked to er more about some of the things she did. She went to what is now Reading University Agriculture department to learn about cheesemaking, that must have been a huge adventure. She left her pony and trap at a pub to be looked after when she went shopping in our local town and the wrong horse was harnessed up in her trap for the journey home, which she didn't notice until it had charged off and deposited her and the trap in the ditch. People were so snobby then that if she walked to school anyone better off than her would not give her a lift in their horse drawn conveyance, they would just ignore her. I always thought we were very close but there is so much i'd want to ask her if we were to meet again.

Maternal GM died at 21 of TB when my mam was 1yr old, GF remarried a few years later and I remember my step GM as a lovely, cuddly, sweet natured, rosy apple cheeked lady, always smiling. She had been a close friend of deceased GM but neither she nor my GF ever discussed her or acknowledged his first marriage. Long after both had died I was amazed to be shown family photographs of them all together along with other friends and my maternal Great Grandmother (Nana). I recall the small table in their living room was always covered in an oil cloth with a bowl of sugar, bottle of camp coffee and tin of condensed milk sat on it. Also the Rediffusion dial fixed to the windowsill for the radio channel. I would sit on my GF's knee by the fire and giggle as he rubbed his bristles against my face. He liked to eat stcks of celery dipped in salt. GM was a school cook and her arms were always covered in burns which she would insist didn't hurt.

Nana who lived to be 93 hated my GF and they had no contact with one another. No idea why, she spoke fondly about my step GM so that was not the problem. Nana was an eccentric lady who lost her husband in WW1, didn't appear to like him much either, and never remarried. She loved to yell at the wrestling on TV and followed the horse racing, sneaking into the Bookies to place her bets. She wore dresses which she knitted herself and boasted that her hair was long enough to sit on though she always wore it up in a bun. She smoked but didn't want anyone to know, quickly hiding her cigarette if caught unawares. More than once she had to be advised that wisps of smoke were emitting from her sideboard drawer ?. She lived in the flat below us, both had outside toilets and were without bathrooms. When my parents had a bathroom extension built she refused to use the bath, preferring to keep coal in it.

My paternal GM was privately educated and very elegant and well spoken. She lived all her married life in a rented flat with outside toilet but was ever so grand. I always thought her posh as she and my GF had a bath under the kitchen bench and a small front garden. She was a stickler for good manners but very loving and made wonderful cakes. Having had two sons and three grandsons I was the only girl and she would buy me pretty party dresses and girly things. She made homemade ginger wine which burned your throat but I loved.

Such lovely memories thank you. Also for reminding me that their generation had such hard lives but never grumbled, I remember them all as such positive people.

Beef OLIVES, not olies!

Maternal granny lived much longer (outlived both her daughters) in Barnes in a little council house (probably worth a mint now, again) and was alone for a long time, like the Queen Mum. Her husband died in early 70s. Nan died in 2000. She was lovely and patient and kind and always the same.

Once at primary school during a French lesson , my teacher kept correcting me because when asked how many grandparents I had I said five. She said no , you must mean three (all this in french ) .
How can you have five grandparents?
I had until I was 18 , one great grandmother , 2 grandmothers and 2 grandfathers . The last of them, my mothers mother died when I was 36 . I was very lucky .
Great grandmother was born in 1880 and it’s now 2020 and I remember her. That’s a span between me now , and her of 140 years !

Paternal granny was a wonderful cook - pastry rose like a bird and she made beef olies from left over Sunday roast.

They had a flat on the top floor of a Victorian square in Hammersmith (probably worth a mint now) and the kitchen had an actual range. Dad could always park right outside. Try that now!

When I stayed I slept in a real feather bed and remember watching a drunk holding onto a lamppost opposite the house.

My maternal GP's lived in a terraced house in a poor part of Liverpool. I didn't see much of them, growing up, as my DP's left the North before I was born, but my DM told me a lot about her formative years. I just remember an old couple, she never said much, we were usually kept away from him. Rare visits took place at an Auntie's house, and "Ninna" would be brought to see her DD and DGC'n there. DM hated her F all her life for the misery he had inflicted on his family as she grew up. Thankfully, DF's parents were a delight, and often came to stay with us when we were young. Lots of happy memories of them. They had a 2-bed bungalow near Southport, and when we were all small, somehow managed to put up a visiting family of 7, bless them.

I have only a few memories of my mum's parents. They lived in a bungalow in, I think, Biggin Hill, Kent. My grandmother was lovely - like her daughter, my mum - but grandad was a bit scary. I do remember that he had a nasty scar on his cheek and when I was old enough to understand I was told he had been injured in WW1 by a bayonet wound to his cheek. One of my memories of visiting them was the delicious smell of crusts of bread baking in the oven for hours on a low light to give to the dog! I have a beautiful studio photo of my nan taken when she was 50ish and because she looks like my mum and I loved them both it makes sad to look at it. Feel sad just typing this.

My dad's parents died before I was born. But I have heard quite a few stories about them. They had 10 children and dad was number 9 - sadly the baby before he was born didn't survive. My mum came from a small family and when dad took her home for tea for the first time she was amazed by the number of people sitting around the table and said "I didn't know it was going to be a party!" "No," my dad said "This is what happens every day!" They lived in Stockwell, South London and because of the danger during WW2 one of their daughters (they had 6) arranged for them to be evacuated, with her, to Irnham, in Licolnshire. Apparently they were very happy there and stayed there for the rest of their lives and are buried in the local graveyard.

I LOVE this thread and have spent quite a long time reading all the posts. What amazingly different memories there are on here.

My maternal grandmother was a farmer's wife in Ireland and had 14 kids.
I was taken to visit her two or three times as a teenager, after my grandfather died. She still lived in the old farmhouse, crippled by arthritis, and was looked after by a small army of daughters and granddaughters visiting every day. A couple of my uncles carried on with the farming.
Staying there was a real eyeopener for me. The house had no indoor plumbing at all; water came from a well and the toilet was a shed built out over the stream running outside - everything got carried away downstream! It had electricity, but the peat cooking range in the kitchen-cum-living room was still the only heating. The family kept pigs and chickens, grew their own vegetables and all food waste went to the pigs, which then provided most of the meat they ate; they were recycling before the word was invented.
Although disabled with her "rhumatiks", Gran was very bright and lively - her husband had been illiterate, so she'd kept the farm accounts and done all the reading and writing for him.
She had a tot of whiskey every evening, loved to gossip and joke with her many visitors and, thankfully, only developed signs of dementia about three months before she died. At the time, I was so shy and in awe of her that I hardly spoke to her. I really regret now that I never had a proper converseation with her.

Mine lived in an old farmhouse with an outside privy down the garden with the obligatory newspaper squares on a string. And an old black leaded range in the kitchen.
There was a pump over the kitchen sink, like a smaller version of the outdoor ones. Meat was kept in a small wooden cupboard or 'safe' with a mesh door, in the larder where it was always cold. The floors were blue stone slabs.
Lighting was by paraffin lamps with mantles, I still have one and it gives of an amazing amount of light as well as heat - we use it still when we have a power cut.
The wireless ran off a car battery.
Upstairs the bedrooms led off each other in a row, in order to get to the furthest bedroom you had to walk through all the others - so only that room could be said to be private. That was Granny and Grandad's room. Their beds were high too and you had to climb into them. They had a kind of woven mesh base with a feather bed topping with blankets and an eiderdown that slipped off. I remember them as very comfy. Oh and a chamber pot with roses on for night time.

I have my grandmother's diaries which make interesting reading. Week after week the entry says "Took (me) to chapel" I only remember an odd occasion and being terrified of the" Bible thumping " preacher. A case of forgetting things you don't want to remember.
She also records having people to stay. I presume it was on a B&B basis. We lived at the seaside Where we all slept, I don't know.My Mum & I lived with my grandparents till we got a council house when my Dad was demobbed
She seemed to divide her time between her daughter and son, going to help with washing, cleaning , decorating and baby sitting. and she also cleaned on a regular basis for several people.
Her diaries are a useful source of births marriages and deaths

One GM dead long before I was born, other died when I was one. Have a photo of long dead one, but absolutely nothing of the one who died when I was a baby and who I was named after. So sad.

My paternal grandmother died when I was a baby. My maternal grandmother lived at the seaside 200 miles away so our annual visit was like a summer holiday. She lived in a typical seaside bungalow. She always dressed formally with suits or dresses. We were told "children should be seen and not heard" by my mother before any visit so did not dare speak too much. My mother was an only child. GM was a widow and a teacher before retirement and remarried after retiring. I can't say I really had any kind of relationship with her and don't know very much about her.

My maternal grandmother was one of a family of 14 children. She was born in Bow. She worked in a hotel in London where she met my grandad. I don't know her housing situation then but by the time my mum was born in 1920 they lived in the downstairs of a house where the owners lived upstairs. There were four children, two boys and two girls. My Grandad worked on the docks in London. He came home one day and told my nan that he had signed a contract to rent a house in Dagenham (now one of the biggest council estates around). My nan's reply was 'I don't want to go and live in the counry'. My grandad would cycle from Dagenham to the London docks They did, in fact, live there for the rest of their lives. I loved my nan and chose to spend most weekends with her.

My maternal nan used to butter the bread before she cut it so it didn't tear holes in the bread. Then she would tuck the loaf under her arm and cut slice wafer thin slices using the knife towards her body. Don't know how she never cut herself!

We lived with my paternal Grandparents, but it was no place for a child, and I was badly abused by my Paternal Grandmother in ways I dont want to go into on here. My Paternal Grandfather really loved me, bought me sweets and chocolate regularly, and had his mistress make and leave me a tray of lovely food in the canteen where they both worked, he as Boiler man, and she has works cook. In later years, I nursed this lady, and she was lovely, so kind and caring. Divorce was seldom heared of back.in the 50s, but life at home with two feuding grandparents was not good.