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

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 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?).

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.

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!

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!

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.

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????

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.

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 !

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

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

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.

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.

This thread is moving towards

www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xe1a1wHxTyo

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

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.

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.

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

Nanav, my mother-in-law makes proggy mats still. She is 91.
She gave us one when the kids were little, because we only had concrete floors. At Beamish you can have classes in making proggy mats.
Not only that, but she has only just got rid of her chimney sweeping brushes. She can remember being asked if she was a lad or a lass as only men were chimney sweeps!

This has brought so many memories back for me , If the coal was dumped on a Monday it caused major problems because most of the woman had done the washing in the "washhouse" using the copper. The washing was then hung across the back lane, When the lorry arrived the driver didn't care about the washing . I was always brought in then so I wouldn't hear the "fish wives" swearing

I can remember when I was a kid in Hull the coalman running over our dog in his horse and cart. He picked it up and brought it in for us to bury in the garden. He knew where it belonged.
Becoming a smokefree zone was a good thing. I can remember the peasoupers seeming to last all winter. My husband wondered why on earth he'd come to Hull when he arrived in thick fog. He'd been born and brought up in pit villages but never experienced anything like it.
One of the sad things is that, when we left Hull, I can remember there only being one ship on the Humber at New Year. When I was a kid, you could stand outside at midnight and hear all the ships hooting. It seemed to go on for a long time.

the last time I was at Beamish I had a long chat with the lady who was making the mats .Happy days

Are proggy rugs what I know as rag rugs? Not a Brummie but Black Country,we had gasunders too.
I also remember Izal sanitised stamped government property paper in both the hospitals and the civil service!

Galen - I think proggy rugs were what I would call rag rugs. All these memories - I remember when the milkman's wagon was horse-drawn and we had a coal man. That was in the 50s. And we used to have a rag man appear about once a month, once again with a horse drawn cart. If you gave him rags he would give you a baby chick (imagine that these days). We used to bath these poor little chicks in a washing up bowl and then let them run around the garden. Needless to say they didn't survive for too long.

We used to get a gold fish off our ragman, you had to take a cup to bring it home. I took my mothers best shoes because I really wanted a fish. My mother to say the least was annoyed and the poor little fish only lasted a couple of hours