What were your grandparents like?

My paternal grandparents lived on our street. My grandfather was lovely but my grandmother was mean!!

My maternal grandfather died When my mother was young, but my grandmother was wonderful

My maternal grandma was a lovely lady. Always dressed well and tied up her white hair into a roll around her head. I didn’t know her for long, but the impression I have of her is very gentle and loving. I used to spend hours playing house in her little shed. I can remember the smell of it now.
My paternal Nana terrified me. She was a big woman, and had had her leg amputated due to diabetes. I would see her covered stump and false leg and was horrified! She had no time for children, and always sent us into her garden to play.

I think that only my maternal grandma was alive by the time I was born .
Her husband was killed before the birth of my mother .
My grand mother was a very kind ,deeply religious country woman . She could be very funny . She was very highly principled and didn't suffer fools gladly .
Grandma wasn't very good at housekeeping,but a superb cook .
She was horrified by the events of World War 1 and 2 .
She'd be really shocked by life today and appalled at continuing wars .
I know that she'd say that Revelations had come to pass .
I think that it has .

Both my maternal grandparents were very radical, and so I imbibed their politics from a young child.

My grandmother was a feminist and I can remember her talking about Rathbone and Fawcett. She had contact with Quakers, but I was never taken to their meetings.

Grandad introduced me to left wing politics and the founding fathers - sat at the dining table on a Sunday afternoon after lunch.

As I got older there were huge debates which I loved.

I also got my love of gardening from my maternal grandfather, this has never left me and I realised that I had learned so much from him. I do have his gardening book, printed in the 1920s which I still refer to.

My paternal grandparents both died before I knew them, which is sad. It does seem that my paternal grandfather was very aspirational for my father, and he paid both for his education and apprenticeship, which given the fact that he was an employee of Delabole Slate Quarry and a splitter meant that he must have had to go without to help my father.

My maternal grandmother of whom I look most alike died young from heart failure.

I was often taken to see Nana and Bompa when I was little. They lived in walking distance and whilst mum talked to Nana I enjoyed watching TV and nattering to Bompa. They had a dog - bull terrier - I used to cuddle up to who was very gentle with me. Sometimes I stayed with my grandparents and went out shopping with Nana. She ran a small bed and breakfast in the summer and as I got older I helped with the laundry with a 'dolly tub' which I quite enjoyed. Poor Bompa had to live in a sort of outbuilding in the yard [the garden was small] at night sometimes if the bedrooms were full! When we moved house Nana moved to a flat nearby after Bompa died and when my parents moved again she had a small cottage again nearby. Nana was an excellent seamstress and made many of my performance costumes as she used to do with my mum. She was kind but firm. We argued a bit but overall we got on well and I miss them both.

I have vague memories of my maternal grandmother pushing me in a seat on a pram. She was a pianist and played in pubs regularly. She died when a drunken driver hit her on a zebra crossing just before Xmas when I was 2.
My maternal grandfather was in the Royal Navy. When he retired he used to mend watches and clocks as a hobby sideline. Table was always covered in clock parts. He used to carry me on his shoulders to the shop and buy me 5Boys chocolate.
My paternal French grandfather died in 1939 from dropsy, I think it's heart failure now. It was caused by gas in the trenches. I never met him.
I lived with my French grandmother for most of my childhood. She wasn't very loving towards me and was very mean and stingy, despite being wealthy. She came from a very poor family and was totally illiterate. She used to secretly gift money to her friends who were poor, leaving cash in drawers when we visited.

My mam’s dad had died back in 1943. He mourned the loss of his youngest son in WWII. Mam’s mam died in 1960 aged 87 and I can only remember her as being bed ridden and living with us. Poor mam and dad had a lot of work to do to look after her. Mam had to give up her job as a nurse.

My dad’s dad was a horrible man and never nice with me. He was a thug in his youth and no one knew what gran saw in him. He died of old age in his eighties.
Dad’s mam was a lovely little lady who I adored and she outlived grandad (good) and lived into her Nineties. The downside was they lived over 200 miles away and I only got to see gran when they visited once per year.

Only knew my grandmas. Both grandads died before my birth, paternal grandad died in WW1 leaving a pregnant wife, maternal grandad died of TB 4 years before I was born and nanna moved in with my parents and lived with them until her death when I was 25. We used to watch Edwardian Music Hall together on tv and I still know the words to a lot of the songs.

My paternal grandma lived with her dad after my dad’s birth, two months after her husband’s death at sea. From about 5years old I used to be allowed to stay overnight at her house. There was only one cold water tap serving the house and that was in the back yard. Grandma would heat up water in a big kettle that hung over her open fire and bring a jug-full up to my bedroom, pour it into a big bowl so I could get washed. The only toilet was also in the washhouse in the back yard and bottoms were wiped with torn squares of newspaper.
I loved both my grandmas very much.

Paternal grandpa was only interested in my sister and would give her anything she wanted. Grandma, however was a lovely warm kind woman who had far more time for me than my own parents - I loved visiting. She had a pot of tea permanently on the stove and one of those floral wrapover aprons.

Maternal grandma was a completely different. Widowed at 40, she worked and raised 5 children alone, marrying again and nursing no 2 until he died when I was a toddler, and marrying again at 75. She was tiny, pretty and lively, and a very sociable flirt and DH no 3 was a gentle quiet man who adored her. She had a stroke in her 80s and he visited her in hospital and sat with her all day, every day until she died, and he died three days later.

Paternal GPs lived on the other side of the country. He had been an engine driver and made me a bow and arrow, she was always dusting. Maternal grandfather died before I was born. Maternal GM was great; DM and I lived with her for a while after my parents split up.

Mums parents were very hard working. Granny was a carpet weaver at Templetons in Glasgow, grandad fought at Dunkirk, then went into the cleansing department, local government.
They came from Govan hill- both would be turning in their graves with the state of the place now.
My dad’s mum died from TB aged 23, grandad remarried a woman that was the spit of Wallace Simpson, right down to the twin sets & pearls. She owned a fish mongers in Glasgow. Grandad was a stoker at the gas board, he died of a heart attack when he was 61.