Keeping warm

My old dad would warm a brick in the bottom of the oven when the dinner was cooking and slip it in their bed wrapped in a tea towel, when my sister or I were poorly he would put the brick in our bed.

In mining villages, the miners put their Davy or Geordie lamps in the outside loos (netties) to stop the water freezing.
Coal wasn’t a problem, as it was seen as part of their ‘wages’ working for the NCB. Sometimes miners would sell half a load for extra money, or give non-mining neighbours a couple of bucketsful. In those days the coal was just tipped - no bags, so the women would turn out with shovels and buckets to move it from the road into the coal house.

My father made electric bed warmers out of a light bulb fixed inside a big toffee tin.

I shudder now to think how dangerous that could have been..

No you're not imagining it ExDancer DS does this with tea lights to keep his camper van warm.

Even in the early 1960s my grandparents used to put a candle under an inverted plant pot in their outside loo. My husband says his dad just used to take the oven shelves out of the oven, wrap them in a towel and use them to warm his bed, as well as bricks.