ootside toilets....first home and all that..ha

I remember the ice on the inside of the windows and the puddles on the window sills when we moved into our first real house. No central heating but a nice roaring coal fire. I remember my sister and I sitting in the bedroom with our backs against the chimney breast which was always warm.

vampirequeen

Some had "John Wayne" toilet paper, rough, tough, and took s... from nobody.
I knew a row of terrace houses, eight of them, the toilets were down the yard, through the gate and across a "backs", all six of them.You see the problem.Who kept which clean, and whose turn for whitewashing and when was paramount.
Sunday mornings was best,all were occupied by "news of the world" reading gents, having conversations about what they were reading, and thick clouds of pipe and cigarette smoke issuing over the tops of the doors.One of the toilets in a nearby terrace had a dual seat, Two holes in a thick plank side by side. Probably one of the reasons people were thought friendlier in those days.
Printmiss, I remember bath nights, we girls first, we were thought cleaner, in all probability. The boys next, an extra kettle full of hot water by now was required, a brick under one end to create a deep end. Most baths were galvanised and invariably hung on a nail behind the coal-house door
Posh people had toilet paper, they also had blue water in the, inside toilet, ( how hygienic is a toilet in the actual house, mother thought) even when they were not expecting visitors, and fruit in a bowl when nobody was ill.
" Would it be possible to bring the toilet roll back, if the visitors didn't come," my friend at the shop was asked."As long as you haven't used it "she replied
Many s the time that father had to dig a path to the toilet in the winter when several feet of snow had fallen, and had drifted up to the top of the downstairs windows, everyone waiting to reluctantly face the cold and visit the freezing toilet. What about the bedroom windows that were frozen on the inside? What about the greatcoats that were used as eiderdowns? I remember a coffin being brought over a mile through hedge top high snow and even deeper drifts on a sledge, so that the funeral could take place, a local pub opened to give the bearers a tot of rum.Good old days weren't they.

vampirequeen I had forgotten about the ice on the windows especially in the bedrooms, it was so thick at the bottom, we had to put towels on the sills, sometimes it never melted all day. I had a jellybag knitted hat to go to bed with.

I have a distinct memory of the coal being delivered too hebrideanlady The coal truck would literally dump a load of coal in the back lane. Depending on what shift my dad was on "helpful neighbours" would shovel the coal into the coalhouse in return for a bucket or two and there was always someone more than happy to sweep the coal dust at the end. I remember my dad telling me that there was a "lady", who was build like a brick sh*t house and had a mouth like a sewer, who would fight to put the coal in. My mum and dad always saw her alright. She was affectionately known as fat Sandra how very un politically correct

This thread is moving towards

www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xe1a1wHxTyo

We had an Ascot water heater which cut out when it overheated (which was most of the time) lol.

Did anyone else have bedtime clothes that included cardi, mittens and hat? We often had ice on the inside of our bedroom windows in winter.

gillybob I wasnt going to post anything today, I thought I would give it a rest, but when I saw your post I couldnt resist. We lived in an upstairs flat, 3 small rooms with a so called kitchen at the top of the back stairs, a sink with 1 cold tap and a cooker. There was a range in the living room which always had a lovely fire on because my dad like yours was a "pitman" when his allowance of coal was delivered, it seemed to me in the late 40s, every one would come out in the back lane with their buckets. I even as a young child had to help to shovel the coal into the coalhouse. nanav123 we also had a frame for a proggy mat, I just about remember all the strips being cut up.

Anyone remember "Tab" rugs, you made them yourself.

jendurham did you have clippy and proggy mats on the floor I can remember my granny getting the frames out every afternoon to make her mats and having to cut clippings for her

Definitely not "the good old days" as far as I'm concerned either ps .

I was born in the 60's and can vividly remember our first flat. It consisted of two rooms (bedroom and back room) and was shared by my mum, dad, my sister and myself. We girls had a curtained off alcove in the bedroom that we all shared so very little privacy for my parents (thank god for grandmas). The back room was a kitchen, sitting room and dining room combined, which funnily enough would be a posh open plan apartment these days. We had one cold tap at the top of the back stairs and a funny little water heater with a kind of spout that the hot water dribbled out of. The toilet was outside and shared with 3 other families (one of which as a creepy, smelly old man) and I was terrified of the spiders that lived in there. My dad was a coalminer back then and I can remember always having a roaring fire and neighbours "borrowing" buckets of coal !

I remember Bronco toilet paper. My mum taught me to scrunch it up to make it soft. It came in very handy for tracing paper. I must be very lucky because I've always had access to an inside loo even if there was an outside one as well. In our cold, damp Victorian house when I was little the third bedroom had been turned into a bathroom and an area partitioned off for a separate toilet. Dad added a length of string to the chain so that I could flush it myself - an activity which I felt I had to carry out at arms length in order to reach the top of the stairs before it finished flushing or something would get me! It was quite spooky at night as there were no lights in the passageway except for a gas lamp on the stairs which emphasised any shadows.

The house I was born in had Gas mantels, a "big light" in the middle, and two alcove lights. The tin bath was for Sunday night in front of the fire, Mum then Dad, then Sister then me. Water was boiled in a "Copper", a free standing boiler. Outside loo, at the bottom of the yard, with a "midden", which we used to climb on and jump across them all, down the terrace, with nieghbours playing pop through the kitchen window. We did " mischief " in those days not vandalism, and besides a nieghbour would clip you round the ear, if you did anything wrong, and that was with your parents permission. Good old days eh????

With a cold bum and a burning tummy because the heat was drawn through the bottom into the stone floor whilst the hot water stayed at the top for a bit longer.

My parents had 6 of us kids. I can remember her getting the tin bath out once a week and bathing us two at a time, in the same water!

Yes the bread wrappings, etc, can see my Nana rubbing them between her strong hands to soften them before adding them to the stash in the outside toilet. I remember having one of those moments of realisation in that toilet - that my mother and/or grandmother could possibly die. Despite the fact my grandfathers and father were dead, this had never occurred to me.
nana used to whitewash the interior once a year to keep it fresh. Remember the smell quite clearly.
I was talking to someone yesterday who was given a council house on Anglesey in the mid 1950s with no running water or electricity, just after her first child was born. Water came from a well in a field full of cows!

And some say "the good old days" - really!
I remember the outside lavvy, bath night in the galvanised bath once a week (on a Friday) in front of the coal fire and gas mantles for lighting. Even the street lamps in Kennington Road, London were gas or candle lit at the time. I recall being able to stay up and listen to 'Dan Dare' on the wireless after my bath as long as I drank a cup of Horlics (Urgh, horrible stuff as I recall).
What a change 60 years brings. I guess we didn't have the pressures of life then as we do today or the expectations for that matter so perhaps were not too dissapointed as we seem to be today.

we had an outside toilet in the 50s and pots under the bed. I don't know how the subject came up but I was talking about this with my nephew the other day. I said we used to have a pot under the bed, he was amazed. I said yes we used to call it a guzunder. He said why - I said because it guzunder the bed ! (Brummie speak maybe?).

When we bought our first house in 1971 there was no bathroom and an outside toilet. Most of the kitchen was taken up by the copper. We lived like that for several years, having baths in the tin bath in the living room.

We never had problems with newspaper blocking pipes. I just wish we had had pipes to block. Our toilet was in the back yard, wooden seat with room for two (but for some reason my mother had screwed a cover on one so no company) and everything went into a bucket which when it was full to almost overflowing my dad took out, dug a shallow hole in the orchard and tipped it in. Years later we found the well where we got all our water from and yes it was in the orchard ! The water came through lead pipes too and had to be pumped by hand into the cistern. Maybe that is why we are all pretty healthy.
( And IZAL was considered posh !)

We lived in a tied cottage (1950's) and had electricity, running water and an inside bathroom. My dad had to come from work briefly when I came home from school to light the gas lights.

Most years I went on holiday to my granddad's farm in Ireland-an outside loo not very close to the house. We had to pump the water we required, carry it to the house and heat as needed. There was a potty under my bed but thankfully in those days I did not need to go to the loo several times a night!

When I first came to London in 1968, I used to visit my aunt and her friend who lived in a tenement block off Shaftesbury Avenue and there was a loo on every second floor. We had to take our own IZAL paper. The block was demolished I think in 1971 and they moved to a council block with their own bathroom, -sheer bliss.

The entrance to our Andersons shelter built in the back-yard, was about four feet from the entrance to the outside toilet - very convenient(!) during an air-raid. The only toilet we had. The tin bath we bathed in was put in front of the fire in winter, and would get roasting hot on one side (Don't touch!) and cold on the other. The washing was done once a week on the boiler which was duly stoked with firewood first thing Monday morning.

When I joined the Civil Service in 1961, the very shiny hard toilet paper was stamped "Government Property".

Yes, my Mum did that with bread wrappings, and also orange wrappings, so the outside lav had bread and oranges adding to the other pongs. We had both an outside and indoor lav at our council house: Dad always used the outside one - he thought we were mucky if we used the indoor one for anything but nighttime. Mostly, the rest of us ignored him on that matter!

Before we got the council house we lived in an old mill house and shared the lav with the couple next door. When his wife died he started getting visits from prostitutes, so Mum forbade us from using the shared lav - we had a commode in the scullery (an unused room) which she emptied into the lav. The council house must have seemed like the ultimate luxury to Mum: I was only 5 and probably didn't appreciate it all.

We had an outside toilet as well in the '50s.It was at the bottom of the back yard and my parents put a pariffin stove in in winter to stop it freezing.
We also had no bathroom, the actual bath was under the kitchen bench which lifted up.Two of my sisters and myself would all get in together to save water.We would always fight about whose turn it was to be last out so we could lie down in the water-what luxury.
My mother used to cut up the tissue paper the bread was wrapped in for toilet paper or use newspaper, it never blocked the pipes either.Sometimes she bought toilet paper, but it was always the hard shiny kind, Izal or Bronco.

I remember when the college I went to was closing down that the bursar found a stock of shiny loopaper and put it in all the toilets. We all used to make sure we had our own so there was still lots left, which presumably had to be sent to the main college at Lincoln.