Cold houses in the past…

BlueBelle

I have no heating in my bathroom or any other room except my main living room and there I have a lovely gas fire that warms the room beautifully so I m no different now to when I grew up
I cannot afford to have central heating put in this big 1875 house but it’s the only thing I ve ever owned and I will never leave it till the day I die.
I have adapted but I just look forward to spring arriving

By the way Cabbage I m not 150 and I don’t sit hunched over in 20 cardigans I do have a big thick oodie though

O0dies are great for keeping warm.
I had my hair cut today, short at the back & over ears, boy did I feel the difference when I left the hairdressers - I should've thought to bring a scarf.

The house I grew up in was v cold, a treat was to be allowed to come downstairs in pyjamas & allowed to dress in front of the (open) fire in the living room, but Mum only allowed this when it was very cold.We had an old plug-in 3-bar electric fire for the bathroom.

My grandparents' houses (all of these several hundred years old) had curtains across every door to keep the draughts out & the fire / people warmth in, it used to smell quite fusty in winter because draughts were the absolute enemy - and leaving a door unclosed in winter - my Mum used to say 'you must've been born in a tent' if we didn't close the room door behind us. Mind you, it was a bit like being in a tent getting from room to room through the door & curtains as a small child.

I was born in 1945. So of course, no central heating or double glazing.

I remember vividly the icicles forming on bedroom windows.
And like many of you here, huddled up under blankets trying to get warm in bed. I suffered terribly with chilblains as a child.
But it was what we were used to, wasn’t it?

Looking back I don’t remember it with fondness. It was harsh and I didn’t enjoy it one bit.
I didn’t enjoy central heating until the year of 1982.
Up until that time, houses we bought didn’t have it.
We made do with paraffin heaters and electric fires.

I don’t think I would consider another house without CH.

My grandma had ‘corned beef legs ‘. I remember having Vaseline rubbed above my knees and into my thighs. I had ‘chaps’ because of the cold

Born 1951, I grew up in Renfrewshire in a house that had been built in 1860 of granite blocks, and had not had a great deal down to it since, barring the installations of two of Shank's oldest models of water closets and hand-basins, and some unnamed maker's bath. And electricity.

Apart from the Rayburn in our dining-room (built as the kitchen originally), there were open fireplaces in every room. Only the one in the sitting-room was ever lit.

In winter we had a parafin. heater in the hall, why I do not know, as it did not manage to make any impression at all on the temperature of the hall and stair-case, a parafin convector heater in the bedroom shared by my younger sister and me, and one in Daddy's consulting-room, only during the hours of the day, when he actually was seeing patients there.

I was cold, all through my childhood, although in winter clothed in knitted woollen, scratchy vests, knitted by my grandmothers, cotton vest, cotton underpants, fleecy top pants, woollen skirt and blouse and a jumper, plus woollen knee length stockings. Later a liberty bodice of flannel was added. And long stockings (the reason for the liberty bodice as it had suspenders.)

A very small area of our beds was warmed by a hot water bottle - one to each person, and if we possibly could we smuggled a cat upstairs to act as a second hottie - one that did not turn cold during the night or develop a leak!

We washed quickly, six days a week, as the bathroom was only heated on bath nights for fifteen minutes prior to a bath being taken and while we were actually in the bathroom thereafter.

No double glazing but we did have solid wooden shutters in every room, which helped when they were closed during the winter from "lighting-up time" and until the following morning.

Considerable ingenuity was used to supply doors with draught excluders, and no child ever wore warm slippers with more glee than I.

Icicles on the inside of the windows, chilblains the whole winter, freezing fog,coming home from school and not being able to see the road because of the fog ,long socks and sensible school shoes, frozen milk on the doorstep . Oh yes,we were cold.

As a child I had brushed cotton PJs and a warm dressing gown, and make pictures in the window ice. Bathroom had a wall heater and my sister grabbed the bedroom with the chimney breast when we moved. We swam in the North Sea in Scotland at Easter and played out in all weathers.

My home is stiflingly warm as DH feels the cold and will not wrap up, so I do feel it when I go out.

I remember the days when my brother wore a balaclava to school, as did many of his friends.

I don't know why, but girls didn't wear them.

When it was cold at school, one lovely teacher used to warm our milk and give us cocoa instead of the cold milk.

I remember freezing in bed in 1955 ... I used to dream about a warm home also wanted to get into bed fully dressed , but mother wouldn't let me ...

I grew up in a 3-storey house with no central heating. My sister and I shared a big attic room with no door! There was a flight of stairs up to our room from my brother’s room. In the winter ice would form on the inside of the window. No heating in any bedroom.

Downstairs in the lounge was a coal fire and an electric heater. There was also an airing cupboard where we kept our nightclothes. There was coal fire in the dining room which was only lit at Christmas. The rest of the year we made do with a 2-bar electric fire.

I remember the winter of 1962/63. On Boxing Day we were woken by a loud crash. The roof of the little conservatory had smashed to smithereens from the weight of the snow.

I also remember schools not closing due to snow, enormous dangerous slides in the playground and frozen milk.

I think we got used to being cold. My parents finally had central heat8ng installed after I left home.

More misery memoirs! Our first home in rural Banffshire had no electricity or piped gas in the early fifties. Cooking was by Calor Gas and lighting by hissing Tilly lamps. The fireplaces used coal and logs. Every so often Dad would disappear to cut peat. This smouldered pathetically in the grate as the family pets huddled round.
I don't remember feeling cold though. A Liberty bodice and puppy fat helped.

BlueBelle

Am I the only person here without central heating ?

No. We don't have central heat.

Two fireplaces and cooking causes kitchen warmth.

Witzend

Who else remembers sitting too close to the fire, and getting those awful red marks on their shins?

Plus of course the endless cry in so many families, of ‘Shut that door!!’

Ah yes, I remember it well. Always the left leg, which was closest to the fire. A judicious shifting to and fro of the metal fire guard when it got too sore.
The old dressing gown over the counterpain covering the ex-army blanket on the bed. Snow on the inside of the bedroom window where the frame was warped. Chilblains in spite of the hot waterbottle - which got cold all too quickly and always red, cold hands.
1962/63 winter, when the school boiler packed up and school continued. Warming hands over the lab bunsen burners. Coats and scarves on in the classroom and 5 minutes of star jumps between lessons.

When I was pregnant with my second child I was having baths in a bathroom where the temperature was 2C above freezing and the wash basin had ice from the dripping tap. I was 42 before I had the luxury of Central Heating.

It was very cold in the old days and there was none of this closing schools for snow. I remember enormous slides in the playground. It's a wonder there weren't more accidents.

BlueBelle I don't have central heating here. I've a bungalow with a multi fuel stove in the kitchen diner. I burn kiln dried logs from 6-10.30pm, leaving the door ajar so heat travels around the other rooms. I don't have heat in the bedroom, never have, but have a 'baavet' [duvet filled with sheepswool] on the bed which is brilliant and I'm cosy.

When in other rooms I put on oil-free radiators on low, shut the door and am warm in about 20minutes. In the mornings I'm always busy doing something, or out shopping etc. so don't feel cold. It all suits me.

I grew up with just the coal fire in the living room, and have a love of seeing a real fire. Ice inside the bedroom windows when I was a kid but my home now has good insulation and double glazing of course. I do like snuggling with a hot water bottle when there's a cold snap and always wear wool jumpers.

Witzend

Who else remembers sitting too close to the fire, and getting those awful red marks on their shins?

Plus of course the endless cry in so many families, of ‘Shut that door!!’

Oh yeah! Those marks were horrible, my Nan had them I remember.
Well we all survived didn’t we, however cold it was.I think being young then we were always on the go so didn’t feel the cold like our old relatives did.

My dad wouldn’t have coats on the bed. He said it meant poverty. Which is strange in a way because we were incredibly poor. But I guess his pride meant that he didn’t want to feel that we were even worse off than we actually were.

Dad’s army coat thrown on the bed, called by Tom O’Connor a continental quilt with arms😁
I hated the stone ‘hot’ water bottles which could break your foot if it fell on it.
We were three girls in one bed in a two up two down terrace.
Plaster falling on to the bed from a hole in the wall…

Mum used to put our clothes for morning, under the eiderdown at bedtime (at the foot end of the bed) so they wouldn't be quite so icy in the morning.

After my father died we moved to live in Mothers childhood home with grandpa and a cousin. It had no indoor plumbing whatever. The three of us shared one bedroom. We all shared the only lav, a bucket under a wooden seat in an unlit outhouse. After a few years hard work and desperate scrimping, Mother bought a prewar semi and we moved back to town. No CH, but it had hot and cold taps; a bathroom, two flushing loos. 3 bedrooms.We each had our own bedroom and mine had a plumbed in hand basin. The luxury, the privacy, the joy.

Our first winter there was exceptionally cold and my private basin's water pipe froze solid. So did the water in the porcelain bowl of the downstairs loo. When the thaw came,
my basin pipe had burst, flooding my bedroom, and the toilet bowl (cracked by ice) dropped right out of the lav onto the floor. Letting out the gases from the public sewer...

Witzend

Who else remembers sitting too close to the fire, and getting those awful red marks on their shins?

Plus of course the endless cry in so many families, of ‘Shut that door!!’

Yes. I was thinking of that last night. I’ve just remembered my mum putting newspaper in front of the fire to get it started. There’s something about Christmas that takes me back to my childhood and makes me remember random things that I’d forgotten.

Witzend

Who else remembers sitting too close to the fire, and getting those awful red marks on their shins?

Plus of course the endless cry in so many families, of ‘Shut that door!!’

I can remember sitting in the kitchen with my new school socks on warming my feet by placing them briefly on the outside of the stove for a few seconds.

Unfortunately, manufacturers had jsut started making childrens socks from wool and nylon for durability. When I put my feet on the outside of the boiler, the heat immediately melted the nylon and it went hard and granular. My mother had to go out and buy me more socks, she was not best pleased.

The programme on bbc4 last night, the Big Freeze, brought back a lot of memories for a lot of people I think.

We lived in a large mock gothic horror type house, the whole neighbourhood was like that, some even with straw roofs. It was rented. Horrors in winter, no insulation of course or double glazing but a large oil fire in the big hall which sort of heated the house but didn't really and a gas fire in the day room where we spent all our time and a bed was made up in there for any kids when we were ill so it was warm. But going to the kitchen was quite an adventure going through freezing corridors, past the cellar entrance, another unheated hallway and then a vast kitchen with a parafine heater. I remember my dad draining the waterpipes every night as they would freeze even indoors. The hot water bottles of course, and the ice flowers on the windows.
Us girls never wore just skirts, we wore them over long trousers underneath with thick stockings and hand knitted over knickers which my nan nitted and we all hated with a vengeance. But the nuns wouldn't let us wear just trousers!! We didnt have school uniforms, this was in holland were school uniforms had never been heard of. Baths on a Saturday night with a parafine heater, sometimes you could hardly see through the steam. I loved it, all 3 of us girls in the bath together and then drying our hair in front of the vast oil fire in the lounge with tv on, one one of those tiny screen ones with radio built underneath and gold black stripey lacquer doors.
We did a lot of ice skating and sledging and building the obligatory snow man which usually lasted all winter but looked distinctly odd at the end. I even remember making igloos, but the boy from next door was involved in that effort.
When I was 11 we moved to a newly build house which had a big oil fire and in the ceiling above it 2 grilles which you could adjust to let the warm air go upstairs, it worked too. But my room was in the loft with a little electric fire for homework times. Funnily enough I can not remember ever being cold.

JenniferEccles

Now we are in the middle of this cold snap I do wonder how many people with central heating are too nervous of high bills to put it on, or for just an hour or two when they can’t stand the cold any longer.

In the past on here there have been shocking accounts of people living in unheated homes with the thermostat showing 13 deg.

Not me! I have gradually tuned up the thermostat as the winter has progressed. Although I have my heating on at a constant temperature I have saved money on what I spent last year, when it went off at night and around lunchtime.
I haven't had my usual ear nose throat or sinus problems and haven't had a cold yet.
I have two thermostats in my large living room- both reading 21 degress and there is lying snow outside.
I hate being cold!

Witzend

Who else remembers sitting too close to the fire, and getting those awful red marks on their shins?

Plus of course the endless cry in so many families, of ‘Shut that door!!’

My dad used to call it ‘corned beef legs’ 🤣🤣

I too grew up in a freezing cold terrace house with no bathroom and an outside loo. And of course the ice on the windows inside on winter mornings.

The first time I remember being cold was when the mini skirt was popular in the 1960s and in winter you sat on icy cold leather seats on unheated buses. That was when I bought a maxi coat.

I moved from home in the mid 1960s into a new build central heated flat. Wonderful.

I do feel the cold because I have hypothyroidism and that is one of the symptoms. I have the heating on full and am wearing a furry puncho with a hood and thick tights underneath. I feel miserable and depressed when Im cold.