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

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.

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.

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.

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

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!

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.

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 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 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".

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.

I lived next door to my Nan until I was 10.
She was a mother of 10 and lived in a 17th century cottage that had originally been thatched but at some point the thatch had been replaced by asbestos corrugated sheeting.
The cottage had 2 main rooms downstairs (one only used for special occasions!) and the kitchen had been built on during the 1900s. You went up two steps to reach it. Next to that was a barn (including a hay loft!) and the toilet - no bathroom! Upstairs were 3 bedrooms - one was more like a landing. I have no idea how 10 children/ teenagers slept there apart from 2 of the girls used to sleep at their aunts house round the corner.
When I was little, Nan also had a chicken run in her back yard - her flower garden was at the front. ably watered from the water butt.
Nan used to have an open fire - no central heating that had a cast iron surround, complete with a bread oven and metal things that used to swing across the fireplace where she used to dry her teatowels and sometimes her undies (as long as she wasn't expecting visitors!)
She did her washing either by hand in the belfast sink , or later on, by a twin tub. No tv until she was in her 70s and was given a black and white tv by one of my uncles that she used to enjoy watching Coronation Street on - up until then, it was radio and especially The Archers each evening.
When my mum was in hospital having my brother and then my sister, I used to go to nans after school for my tea. I used to run errands for her to the butchers on the corner as well as another general shop about 100 yards away - she used to give me 50p a week for that- when we moved elsewhere in the village, I still carried on doing that for her.
A staunch church goer and member of the Mothers Union - only missed if she was unwell, and sat in the same pew each week at church.
After she had a bad case of flu, followed by a fall breaking her hip and a hospital stay ( she was horrified that she was not allowed to wear undies in hospital), the family got together and formed a rota for "Nan sitting" so she was not alone at night - her bed was moved downstairs into the parlour while whoever was staying slept upstairs - my mum took her turn on a Thursday and often said about how cold it was in the winter - hot water bottle, a pair of bedsocks and sleeping in a dressing gown was a must!
Nan always had a tin of humbugs in the cupboard next to wear she sat that used to be handed out to the grandchildren.
I got married on her 83rd birthday and she continued living in the cottage all year round until a couple of years before she died, when she went to stay at my aunt's (her eldest daughter) house from Christmas until Easter.
She sadly died peacfully in her sleep,while I was living in Australia - the day after moving to my aunts for the second year, but she insisted on my Christmas card being posted a few days before. I still have it.
After her passing, the family central hub had gone - her house was the place everyone met up with the rest of the family and was the exchange place for presents at Christmas!
The cottage is still there, but it has been gutted and redesigned so is completely unrecognisable and missing the warmth and love that was always found there.

My paternal nanna lived in London and their house was opposite the Kenco Coffee Factory. That combined with the stink of the river Wandle which was nearby I will never forget. My grandad was a real old grump and never spoke to me or my brothers. We always used to visit them after church on a Sunday. As we left I always remember my nanna, would pop some big old pennies in our hand and whisper don't tell your granddad. I also remember he would not have electricity put in the house and if we visited later in the day you had to sit almost in the dark until he put a, light on the gaslight. When he died my dad got the electric in straight away for my nanna. Happy days. My other nanna loved in Northern Ireland and I would visit for a few weeks each year with mum. I loved it as I loved to listen to their Irish lilt and everyone was so friendly. I also remember that you were not allowed to go down certain streets to play because of the different religions. My nanna, went mad when my cousin married a girl 'who kicked with the other foot' and they are still married after all these years

I was born in Swindon during World War 2, and still remember that awful droning noise that German planes used to make at night before dropping bombs. My Mum used to throw my brother and me under the table to save us. One day she showed us through the window a plume of smoke from a house in a nearby street. It belonged to Mr Strange and he was killed. I liked him as he was the local greengrocer and always gave my brother and me sweets when he saw us. He had a shock of white hair like a fuzzy halo. Looked a bit like Einstein.
Another thing I remember in those days was my parents kept a little radio shop and we lived above it. My brother aged 3 and I aged 4 played in the front room which was kept warm by a coal fire. My father was away in the Army and Mum was in the shop. Suddenly while chasing me my brother tripped and fell backwards over the fireguard with his head in the fire. I rushed downstairs shrieking to get Mum but she was busy serving a man who was buying something. I pulled at her skirt, screaming and crying, but she ignored me until the transaction was over. Then she ran upstairs and pulled my brother out of the fire. His hair had caught light and she called the doctor. Thankfully it seems no permanent damage was done, and my brother survived. I got the blame as Mum said I had pushed him.
Mum's parents were quite well off and lived in Swindon in a large house. Grandad was chief inspector on the railways and had a good salary. Grandma, who had 8 children, always wore a fur coat when she went out. My other grandparents were living in Brazil at the time so I never saw them at that time.
These are my earliest memories and they and one or two others were rather grim. We moved to South Africa when I was about 7 and I have a lot of happy memories of my childhood there, and that is where my father's parents moved to and I finally met them.

Thecatshatontgemat the rag and bone man was always a disappointment for me. He’d arrive in our street blowing his bugle with an array of goodies on display. Balls, plastic torches, table tennis bats etc.

But no matter what size bundle of rags I ran out with he only ever gave me a balloon!

On a positive note his horse usually left a deposit in the middle of the road and my Mum scooped it up for her roses!

What a lovely thread. So very interesting!
I can't remember housing in days gone by, but l remember shopping, daily.
There was a shop for each item you wanted, and no one had even heard of a supermarket.
And hardly any cars, and the ones that were around, were started by a crank handle at the front.
The rag and bone man called every day to my street, and the cart was pulled by an old horse.

My two grandmothers were very different!
My father’s mother was an older mother, and my father was nearly 40 when I was born, so she was on the older side.
she knew how to drive, having been a driver for an Army General in WW1 (Unusual I think for women of her generation, born in Victoria’s reign) and she used to love zipping around the Sussex country side in her Triumph car!
They lived in a cottage out in the Sussex Weald and most exciting for me they had their own wood and orchard in the grounds which I got to explore as much as I wanted to; I can’t see today’s parents allowing this! Age 5 or 6 when staying with them, I would get up have breakfast then run down the garden to the wood and be there unsupervised for hours playing in the tiny stream or building dens. I also Especially remember afternoon tea which always featured Lapsong and Earl Grey and Lovely home made cakes which I didn’t get at home!
My other grandmother was completely different, part French she had trained as a chemist before the Second World War and has worked for a big company I remember her as being very elegant and chic! My mother was bought up in Egypt where the family owned factories, so both mother and grandmother spoke French and Arabic and both cooked lots of Middle Eastern food at home.
When I was a teenager she told me to call her by her first name and used to take me shopping which was great fun.
When she was widowed she lived with us for a couple of years before buying a cottage just up the road from us, I loved visiting as she wasn’t strict in anyway, cooked lovely spicy meals and let me play with her makeup and jewellery.

I’m enjoying this thread, it’s wakened up the old grey matter. Really interesting to read about other folks childhood memories.

Despite the poverty and hardships they endured I have no recollection of ever hearing my grandparents grumble. They just accepted their lot and made the best of it.

My nan on my Dads side was quite a formidable character. I remember her being tall and quite stern. My granddad on the other hand was a nice man and I wasnt scared of him. I remember having to visit every Sunday for tea - Angel cake or Battenburg and watching Black & White minstrels on their tv. Granmother on my mothers side died before I was born so my mum and her sister were brought up by their Uncle. He lived next door to his brother and they had a doorway between the two sittings rooms which was partitioned by a heavy curtain so you could hear him coughing next door. The front room was an immaculate 'victorian' room, with polished wooden furniture, old oil paintings, piano and we were not allowed to play in there. The toilet was at the bottom of the garden with newspaper hanging in square sheets on string. Those houses are no longer there now and last time I drove past you could see the outline of what was the toilet at the end of the garden, the rest is an open air car wash.

My maternal grandparents lived in a house then owned by the NCB. My grandfather had a job in the office at the local colliery, but was semi-invalid from his late 30s due to a stomach ulcer. I'm not sure whether that was the cause or a symptom of his bad temper! Or it could have been the 8 children..not THAT much of an invalid, then! But no television, only a radio which was turned on and off when he said so.
My nan, on the other hand, was the sweetest old lady ever put on this earth. She managed with very little income, and was kept busy fetching and carrying for her husband, who for as long as I could remember seemed to be permanently ensconced in a chair beside the kitchen fire. Her many grandchildren adored her. She had the fine, velvety skin of a baby button mushroom, and always wore a flowered wrap-around pinny. Never seen outside without her squishy crimson velvet hat, nailed firmly to her head with a steel hatpin. She taught me to crochet when I was very small, with fine cotton yarn and a very fine hook. Both grandparents died when I was 12, within eight weeks of one another. Granddad first, stomach ulcer finally burst and killed him. Nan followed 8 weeks later, she said she could still hear him barking orders at her. Funny thing was, they adored one another, even though they never demonstrated it in front of anyone else, even close family. When the house was cleared after their deaths, I was allowed to choose a keepsake. I still have the hatpin and crochet hook. I also have a photo of my nan in her early 40s, looking no different to when she was in her mid-sixties. Times were hard.

My Grandma, born 1885, used to tell us about her work as a waitress in a posh hotel. Apparently the correct way to eat asparagus is to pick up the stalks, which were covered in butter, in your fingers and eat from the bottom up.
Funny thing to remember.

When my grandad died my gran had to leave the big house and move into a small unheated housing exec house on a new estate.
I often stayed there a d was allowed to do all the things I couldn't do at home. We baked and cooked every day, I cleaned and set the fire and hoovered.After our morning coffee we walked into the village where she had a long chat with every shopkeeper.
After lunch we listened to woman s hour and sometimes went for a walk through cup try lanes where we found watercress and primrose.She was a great gardener and taught me all the names of things.I used to take her bike out sometimes as there was no traffic.
I was woken in the cold back bedroom at 6.00 by the factory hooter . In the drawer beside my bed were some interesting items of my grandads. Never knew what they all were but one was a long rubber tube with a sphere in the middle that pumped air.I dread to think what he used it for!

My Grandma looked like a cuddly Miss Marple. She was always baking and she would knit jumpers for us all and warm socks for my uncle who was a copper. Shopping was done every day and it was my job to count the bags of coal as they were delivered by the coalman. Only heating was a fire in the living room, gas fire in the dining room and a paraffin heater in the bathroom. She had a bathroom but also an outside loo, freezing in the winter and spiders in the summer! The big water geyser in the bathroom for hot water terrified me as it was so noisy! Also a big enamel bath I struggled to climb in to. Happy memories.

My maternal gparents lived way outside the village and I remember my dear, tiny GM pushing a trolley with milk churns in to walk to a standpipe in the village when the well was dry. GF couldn't do it as was blind in one eye (school playground accident) and walked with a stick (farming accident). The toilet was a bucket affair across the tard with newspaper on a string. The copper, where all the washing was done, was across the yard. GF used to chop the piles of wood needed to boil the water. Mangle in the outhouse. I remember the treacle cakes she used to make in the big black kitchen range, my favourite bit was in the centre which was always gooey.
The 'best room' with stuffed animals under glass domes, only used on special days! Busy bee was a good name for her, I can nevervreally remember her just sitting down and doing nothing. GF used to smoke a pipe and she would go to the village for his 'baccy', her little legs going like mad, even if she had only just got back from one such trip. She used to make rabbit stew when GF and the other farmers cut the corn in the next field, and the rabbits popped out.
We had oil lamps or candles for lighting and just the kitchen range for warmth but I can still feel the happiness and contentment of that very basic, simple life.

Lived in an Edwardian semi in South London. Grandfather a packer for WH Smith but nice solid house. I was allowed to help feed the clothes through the mangle in a sort of glass lean-to behind the kitchen. She made brilliant fairy cakes and also caraway seed cake. Grandfather taught me to play drafts and chess. I remember seeing the hole in their back room floor after a bomb dropped, and grandfather going out in a tin hat as an air raid warden.

Due to family problems I was brought up by my gran from when I was 8 they was the happiest years of my life you brought back so many things my gran used to do but she would go in the back entry on Colman day to see if they had dropped any coal if they had she would put it in her penny pocket another 1 was putting a shilling in the meter and buying mutton for Sunday dinner but we had it all week