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

My grandmother lived in London but was from Holland. always had a pigs head bubbling on the kitchen range to make brawn (we called it hoofkarse* I think) and I loved it in sandwiches. She also gave us sugar sandwiches. And she taught me to shell peas and now I love to do that with my grandaughter.

My Mum's mum was a sweet lady who died when I was 6. She taught me & my sister to knit as we sat at the end of her bed copying her movements, (we still both cast on backwards).

My Dad's mother had died when he was a boy, but when Mum was ill for many months me & sis were sent from Sussex to Suffolk to live with step-gran. Ooh, she was an evil woman, we were terrified of her. Her house was cold & dark, we weren't allowed to play or make a noise, & were forbidden to go to the outside lav after bedtime at 5.30. My sister has spent most of her life with severe constipation, due I'm sure to being afraid to "go".

we lived with my maternal nan until i was 7 and then i stayed every weekend and most of the holidays. she had a 4 bedroomed house that all had fireplaces in the bedrooms but only hers was ever used - in the winter when she was confined to bed with a bad chest. although we had an inside toilet there was an outside one - very scary with lots of spiders. next to that there was a coal shed and next to the house there was an outhouse that used to house the mangle. over the fire in the back room was a pulley were all the washing was dried then aired after ironing. my nan had been born in cumbria then moved when a baby to durham(father was a miner) then in her teens moved to the wirral and was in service until she met granddad. my paternal gran died when i was young so only have vague memories of her as we only used to see my paternal grand parents once a year and paternal granddad died when i was 10 and i never knew my maternal granddad as he died when i was 6 months - he had been gassed in the 1st world war - In later years my nan had been a school cook until she hurt her back. i remember she always seemed to have a lot of energy to do things with me and a lot more walking than we do nowadays, i wish i had the same energy with my grandkids! She also used to scrub the front every week and polish the tiles with some red stuff. Such happy days.

My Paternal GM was a formidable woman who was widowed and left with 9 children after my PGF had an accident on the docks,she had no income of her own apart from washing she took in so she rented a large house not too far from where I live now in fact.It was a huge double fronted house still standing to this day.
She turned it into a boarding house and bundled the family she still had at home into the loft rooms.
All the lodgers paid up front on Fridays when they got paid and if they weren't at the big dining table on time they didn't get a meal if she ever caught any of them going to bed in dirty socks she went mad with them for bobbling her sheets.
Every Sunday I used to go to her house and collect mint leaves from the bottom of the garden for the Roast dinner which was always welcomed by the men,they where mostly Irish navvies and loved their food.
Nana worked so hard and ended up buying/renting a local fish & chip shop and a veg shop all just around the corner from her house so we where always well catered for.
My nana remarried when she was 78 and went to live in Goole North Yorkshire she had a full and busy life.

We lived with my Paternal grandparents until I was 6, so had lots of time with Nannie. She was not a cuddly sort, but if I was good when we walked to the shops she would buy me a Penguin biscuit. I remember her singing while she did the washing, all by hand , amazing as there were six of us in the house. Maiden Aunt lived there and Nan constantly nagged her, whereas my Dad was the apple of Nan's eye. So unfair now I look back. She was a good cook and we always had a dessert, chocolate blancmange being my favourite.

Maternal Nan was so different. Always lovely soft cuddles on offer. Peachy cheeks to kiss and she was always there to help and advise right till her last days. I have my love of second hand things from her, as she was always buying bits from the auction/jumble sale and doing them up and selling for a profit. Oh how she would have loved the selection of charity shops that we have nowadays. When my four children were small and money very tight, she would turn up with a black sack full of kiddies clothes that she'd bought from a jumble sale, and it would feel like Christmas rummaging through to see what was in it. Grandad would turn up with a scooter or trike that he'd repainted and made good as new. I would love just one day with them both if I could wave a magic wand.

We lived in Scotland, All grandparents in North Wales. Paternal grandparents ran a guest house first one I knew of, the house was opposite Llandudno station. Some guests arrived on train and got a taxi to 'Gwalia". The driver took them on a tour of Llandudno before dropping them across the Road. They moved to another house in Clifton Road, my sister and myself "helped" when we were there. Taid Llandudno managed E.B. Jones a grocer store. Both worked very hard and we loved going to visit them. My maternal Nain lived alone in a horrible dark house in Dyganwy. She was deaf and shouted at us. The saving grace of that house, the small bedroom window looked directly across the water at the lit up Conway bridge, with lit up yachts in the estuary. It was breathtaking!

My nana (mum's mum) lived until she was 94. When I was growing up we, my mum, dad, sister and me lived with her in her terraced house. It was originally a 2 up 2 down and my dad divided one bedroom into two and put a bath in under the stairs in later years. The toilet was at the end of the yard. There was an immersion heater for hot water but no central heating, just a gas fire in the living room. We had no phone until 1981 when my paternal grandad died and my grandma insisted on us getting a phone. It was a party line initially but saved us having to go to the phone box across the road. My mum worked and in the school holidays my nana would take me and my sister with her whilst she did cleaning jobs for local shops

Lots of lovely memories. My father was an only child and his mother a WW1 widow who lived in her parents house near the sea which they bought new in 1918. We travelled a long distance every year for summer hols and as an adult I kept up with frequent visits til she died aged 88. In the 1950's there was a pail at back door for milk and a meatsafe up on an outside wall. In the 1960's a gas powered fridge arrived. There were some old gas filament light fittings but had been replaced with electric. There were still 'blackout' blinds on the windows and there was a gasmask about in a box. The front garden railings were take for 'the war effort' in WW2 and never replaced. My gran had a sad life I suppose having lost her husband in second year of marriage and she was left with a baby to rear. She moved in with her parents and cared for them until they died. Then my father went abroad for work where he stayed til retirement, returning to UK just months before she died. Sign of the times that so many women remained unmarried /widowed after the war.

I can clearly visulize every room in my paternal grandparents' house. Their garden isn't quite so clear.

I have even clearer recollections of my maternal grandmother's house and garden.

The thing that impressed me most as a child was how tidy everything was. Neither of my parents were tidy people, so our house was only moderately tidy at Christmas. The rest of the time it looked as if it had been stirred with a stick.

Daddy' parents had lived in France when newly married, and Grannie stuck to the French habit of scrubbing the pavemnet outside her front door every morning.

My maternal grandmother had central heating from the time when I was seven. Literally no-one else I knew had then.

Nanna had a corner sweet shop in Birmingham. I remember the small counter and the glass cabinets full of chocolates and cigarettes. Shelves at the back supported ranks of screw-topped sweet jars. I remember the ping of aniseed balls dropping into the copper scales, and the crack of the metal hammer breaking toffee. The till was a simple wooden drawer with compartments for coins, notes and, in those days of rationing, sweet coupons. As a child I used to help count the coupons at the end of the day when Nanna shut up shop.

Nanna’s house adjoined the shop. A hallway, cluttered with boxes and tins (Woodbines, Craven ‘A’, Quality Street etc) led into the sitting room, which in turn led to the kitchen, dominated by a large black range. Off the kitchen, a tiny scullery housed a stone sink for washing dishes and clothes. Nanna used to wash herself there too – a habit she continued after a bathroom was installed upstairs. She also continued to scurry across the yard to the outside lavatory rather than climb the stairs to the bathroom. How I hated that outside lavatory, especially those torchlit visits on a cold winter’s night.

In the sitting room, a fire burned in the grate and beside it hung the big brass fork for toasting our bread in the open fire. In the corner was a gramophone. Nanna liked to listen to Cavaliera Rusticana or Ol’ Man River and it was my job to jump up to wind the handle when the gramophone began to run down.

Nanna was a formidable woman with a viperish tongue. She nagged me for always having my head in a book. She never had a kind word to say to me or to my mother and aunt who helped her in the shop. My mother used to explain this in terms of Nanna’s upbringing as the eldest daughter of a violent publican. From the age of 14, Nanna had to get up at the crack of dawn and clean the pub from the previous night – an unimaginably awful task bearing in mind the kind of “spit and sawdust” pubs that existed in Victorian times.

It saddens me that I don't have happy memories of my grandmother. She was the only gran I knew – my father’s mother died when he was 14.

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.

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!

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 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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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 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.

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.

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 !

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.

Beef OLIVES, not olies!

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.