Sundays in the "olden days"

I quite liked Sundays. If we were at our Grandparents we would walk to church (a good three miles). If we’re were at home we’d go to church in the car. Then family dinner with grandparents and after that Dad would take a dinner round to my Great Uncle and we might go with him. I was fascinated by the fact that my Great Uncle had never seen the sea! Family time, baths and hair wash ready for school. My grandparents did have views on appropriate activities for a Sunday, but my parents were pretty tolerant. I always feel sad that Sunday opening hours were changed and deprived so many people the opportunity of spending time with the family.
I guess it depends on your family though…

Allsorts. You were lucky to have public transport on a Sunday. I had that privilege too, as I lived in Edinburgh. BUT now I live in a village, neither that nor tthe local market town has bus services on Sundays and none at all any evenings. Pretty frustrating for young and old. If you are not a car owner, you are nothing. As a child I was a voracious reader. Still am.

Caleo it was not until 1994 that the Sunday Trading Act was introduced.

Before then, Sundays were a family day, pleasurable for most but not all as is evident on the thread.

Buses ran frequently so visits and trips could be undertaken; shopping was not the Great British Pastime that it seems to be now where children are dragged around the shops on Sundays, supposedly for enjoyment.

Sodapop, I should have said "into" or "as recently as "the 1960s.

My memories were from the 40s and 50s Caleo there are a lot of younger GransNetters on here ( of course I'm not jealous )

I am amazed by the scale of indoctrination into both RC and Protestant sects that was still being practiced in the 1960s! I had no idea there was so much. Likewise I thought the working classes were in the forefront of rebellion against Sabbatarianism certainly from the 60s onwards. It seems I was mistaken if these few anecdotes are typical.

Sad to read about such miserable Sundays! We loved it, Dad was home at weekends from his ship and cooked breakfast, that was a treat. We lived with our grandparents, and had a big extended family. Sunday School when young, and it was fun, and we met la lot of friends. We never had roasts, but a good dinner, and the radio. In summer I was sent for a big tub of icecream from Mary at the Italian café, shared out with fresh strawberries. My grandfather loved the hills, and often took me for walks up the braes, and on alternate Sundays our aunt and cousins came for tea. There were often bands playing across from the house, and we had no restrictions on playing outside. The only thing I didn't like was the thought of school next day. Apart from that they were very happy times., and I'm grateful for the memories. ?

I've always loved Sundays Church home for a fry up for lunch visit to my Gran all the family having a lovely roast Songs of Praise and Sunday night at the London Palladium Home to bed That was my 60s childhood

Sundays at home were boring in those days, that's true. The elderly wanted their day of peace and rest after a hard week's work and assumed the children behaved accordingly. I remember my parents talking negatively of neighbours that did go out on Sundays. Now it's the opposite. Nowadays, you are considered a hermit when you don't do anything in the weekends. I also remember quite vividly being jealous of those that went for a day at sea. The only thing we ever did was a bicycle trip of an hour without dad who wanted to watch television. I think we only went once to sea when I was a child. Luckily, there were my grandparents that lived nearby. That's one thing I was allowed to: taking my bicycle to visit my grandparents. They had allowed me to install their attic as my "club house", with old furniture and old findings, but it was a place I could call my own. And they let me do my thing there. And we also walked the flower and vegetable gardens, my grandfather and I, admiring the flowers and greens growing. So, after all, when I dig deeper into my memories, Sundays were not that all boring any more. The love for gardening is still alive, even now at 62, thanks to my grandparents and our lazy Sundays.

I quite liked Sundays as a child and now I'm retired with no Monday morning blues, I still try to 'keep Sunday special'. It was the only day I got to spend time with my Dad as he was rarely home from work by the time I went to bed during the week. Sunday mornings he would work in the garden with an 'old boy' who came to help him. They would come in for a cup of coffee at 11 and then go back to grass cutting/hedge trimming and staking my mother's beloved dahlias. My mother would always prepare a roast Sunday lunch single handed and I well remember the smell of the meat cooking with Two Way Family Favourites on the radio in the background. Bill Crozier, Jean Metcalfe and that exotic sounding place - Akrotiri. After lunch we always went out 'for a spin' in Dad's Rover, usually to a beauty spot somewhere outside the city. Then back for tea and cake before attending Evensong - my Dad was churchwarden so it was pretty much compulsory for me to attend. Once I reached my teens I'd joined the Church Youth Club which always met just after Evensong so a whole gang of us would squeeze into a back row pew - 'Sinners Corner' the vicar called it - and whisper about which boy we fancied. Some of us are still friends more than 50 years later.

In the summer we would go out for picnics. In the winter we would play monopoly with my dad while mum cooked the Sunday roast ??

MissA, I also was never allowed to say I was bored, never knew why but can honestly say to this day I don't even say it and have never heard my two sons say it either.
Sunday was Sunday school in the morning, I was the teacher for a small group of young children, mostly from a children's home in the parish, we read Bible stories and they all drew pictures before a sing song and home for Sunday lunch. One of our neighbours had a car and they would sometimes take me for a ride in their car to the seaside or into the country with them, then back again for tea and to watch a children's TV programme because we didn't have a TV at our house. I remember sooty and sweep been on sometimes, but other times we went to Church for Evensong.

Absolutely drene! Couldn’t remember the name !

Mum would snip the corner off a shampoo sachet

Drene shampoo?

Ah yes, Sunday bath night - Mum would snip the corner off a shampoo sachet, pour it into an empty milk bottle and top it up with warm water. All 3 children had our hair washed with it! Toe nails cut (I hated that. Sometimes my fringe would be trimmed - not always straight tho ?

Sunday afternoons on BBC was where I learned to become a world authority on the films of Ginger Rogers & Fred Astaire.

creativeness

Can sympathise with nearly all of these comments above Sunday school &radio progs dire telly etc too

But we knew no different!
I rather enjoyed some of those programmes.

Later in, in my mid-teens, a friend used to come round on Sunday afternoons with his jazz records. Goodness knows what my parents thought of Jelly Roll Morton etc being played on the radiogram.
Mum would disappear for a rest, Dad would disappear to the greenhouse.

Can sympathise with nearly all of these comments above Sunday school &radio progs dire telly etc too

PS I filled one drawing book after another as I drew constantly. I have never actually stopped. So that was another favourite activity.

I was born in 1941 so remember the air raid shelters and the VE children’s party. I remember playing on bomb sites until my mother caught me. Sundays were for me going to church and then visiting grand parents before I went home for Sunday dinner (not lunch). After dinner my parents read the newspapers and went to sleep. Later on they roused themselves and we either went for a walk or visited my other grandparents where we had tea -probably salad, ham or tinned meat, tinned fruit and evaporated milk. We didn’t have a tv until the fifties and the radio was new to us. First programme I heard was Riders of the Range by Charles Chilton. We loved the radio with favourite programmes on aSunday like Itma, Educating Archie.Archie was a ventriloquist dummy ( on the radio!!!). Then there was Billy Cotton and his band. Jimmy Jewel and Ben Wallis etc etc. What we had was a lot more freedom to go out to play. Favourite treat was playing records on my gran’s wind up record player in order to hear Bing Crosby, the Andrew Sisters, George Formby etc. Things like toys were in short supply and food was on ration. However, everyone I knew were in the same boat so didn’t feel deprived. On the plus side we had a good library which I loved as I read a lot. There was a swimming baths so could swim from quite an early age. There were 4 cinemas including the Saturday Morning Pictures and the V&A and science museum were in walking distance; all free to enter. There was a playground nearby and parks if you were prepared to make the walk. Yes Sundays were a drag but perhaps the quiet and a chance to rest was what our parents needed as Labour saving devices were in the future heralded by the first launderette !!!

Oh yes.
Me too!

I waited all day long on a Sunday, in my early teens, on The Top 40 coming on. I sat with my blank cassette tapes purchased in Woolworths on the Saturday to record all my favourite songs, trying to judge when the DJ would talk to cut him out.

I refused to go to Sunday school more than once.
My DH was similar - when he was supposed to go there, he went to his aunty's across the road instead. The deal was that if he helped with washing the dishes (from their Sunday dinner), they would say nothing to his parents, but I'm sure that his parents knew exactly where he was ?

I loved Sundays with Sunday lunch and 2 way Family Favourites. Then we often took my little brother for a walk in his pushchair. We went to the station to watch the steam trains puffing through. Sometimes we’d go to a little sweet shop owned by an old lady and I’d get a little triangular bag of lemonade powder, which left your tongue all yellow. We’d go home for tea and we’d listen to “life with the Lyons” and “take it from here” as well as all the other Sunday programmes.I would often embroider as I listened and sometimes a friend would come round. It was a lovely family day.

Oh Lord. Sundays. Church in the morning Eleven o'clock mass. Father Morris breathing firestone and brimstone from the pulpit terrified me. Home for a traditional Sunday lunch. Listening to the radio Forces family favourites from exotic places like Akrotiri in Cyprus. A lovely mixture of classical music, funny records and the latest pop music. A time when things were shared.
Sunday school in the afternoon. Hell on earth then Benediction at 4.30. All in latin which confused the life out of me. My sister prodding me to make me laugh.
Fear of Monday as I struggled at school. Funny to think of it all now. So different today.