I was a child of the 1950's and when I was very small there was an outside toilet which was basically a wooden board with two holes over a chemical toilet. This chemical toilet was emptied at night by a vehicle called "The Honey Cart" or as some people called it "The Night Cart". There were squares of news paper on a hook. As little children we were allowed to have a pot indoors of course.
We had coal fires and no electricity, we used paraffin lamps instead. No bath either, we used a tin bath. When I was about 6 we moved into a council heat which had electricity and a proper bathroom and open fires, no central heating. We had no phone, no washing machine, no fridge but we did have a mangle and a copper for doing the washing.
I had left home before my parents got the phone which would be 1970's. Prior to that I just about lived in the phone box down the road!:) We had no car until I was about 15 and we wouldn't have had that but somebody died and left one to my Dad.
Having said all that, in comparison to other local families we were quite well off because there were only 3 kids in our family. Many had 6, 8 and 10 kids and were really, really poor. Also both my parents could turn their hands to anything so my Dad grew loads of veg and fruit for us and Mum always cooked great, healthy meals.
I grew up in a modern built three bed semi. It had a coal fire and a fitting for a gas poker - they were awesome.
When I moved into the flat I lived in the longest and had a small child, it had one working hearth,a kitchen boiler thing for the hot water, and that was IT.
The child had a series of long woolen dresses made by my Mother to put over her clothes.:eek:
This was in 1996.
But was it fun to be living like that in 1996? That's what the thread is about:
Modern times are great, but the simpler times were also a lot of fun.
If everyone around you is living the same lifestyle then you don't feel you are missing out. If you are surrounded by people in a better situation than you then it's less fun.
My grandparents house was fun. They were born in the 1890's and lived in this house till the late 70's. It was a big spartan house, at least four bedrooms with hardly anything in them except bed, chair, dressing table, maybe a rug on the floor. Huge garden, cobwebbed outhouses, one was their outside toilet, they never saw the need for an indoor one.
They had huge ornate chamber pots under the bed. Looked like they were made of china, with lids on. And a little one for me. Once while staying over when I was about 5, I woke up needing the chamber pot. I climbed out of the very high up bed, and reached for the pot in the dark - the next thing I knew I was crying for help and running round in a void - I couldn't find the bed, let alone the chamber pot!
It was a great time to be a teenager! We saw groups like the Beatles, Kinks, Animals and the Who at really small local dance halls. When I went to university I didn't have to pay fees, I got a grant and I even got travel expenses paid every term.
Although my childhood was hard by today's standards in terms of all that we didn't have, nobody else had any of those material things either, so it was normal not to have them. We didn't know that looking back in the next century we'd seem so deprived! And we had freedom to play out, to be with friends without adults around. Life is more limited in some ways now.
Same here! Saw the Beatles, Stones, Who, Jimi Hendrix, Animals, Dylan, Doors and hundreds more! Great time to be growing up. And the clothes! Wonderful to be able to buy real teenage clothes.
Was so used to growing up in a cold house, nowadays I cannot stand central heating and too warm houses. Just piut on a jumper and have loads of throws on the sofa!
Don't think my mother had a ready-meal in her life. All the veg was fresh from my father's allotment; great excitement wshen fresh peas and raspberries came into season. He stored potatoes and apples in the cellar as well as onion 'strings' to see us through the winter.
The range of food available was very limited by todays standards and, I must admit, that is what I would miss most if we had to go back to a 60's diet
My Gran and Granpa had a holiday cottage in Shropshire in the 70s.
No road, lane or even a path.You climbed a stile and went over a small field, full of scary cows.
(I suppose we must have parked nearby somewhere but can't remember)
No elec, just oil lamps.
Only cold water from the well into the Belfast sink in kitchen (hand pump)
Something in the well broke every day and my Dad could only fix it with Mum's tights.
Me and my sister got milk and eggs every day from neighbouring farm.
Chemical toilet in knackered barn, right in the middle of a huge space. Quite unnerving.
Shotgun and traps for pheasant and rabbit.
I suppose there must have been a wood burning range since I remember delicious meals.
We were lucky, lived in a police house with all the mod cons of the 50's We had a TV in the parlour but only saw it after a bath on Sunday.
My grandparents lived in a terraced house with outside toilet and no bathroom. The only tap was in the kitchen and hot water was a gas geyser above the sink. They had a tin bath. No TV just a radio. The house was freezing as they only had a coal fire in the sitting room.
I was born in 1943, so my upbringing was what todays standards would probably call grim, but funnily enough, I didn't see it that way, we had an outside toilet, no TV, until the coronation (1953) and no heating, only one coal fire in the living room. I don't remember being cold though. We didn't have a fridge or a washing machine, the washing was done once a week on a monday, with a scrubbing board and a wringer. We did have an inside bath though, in the kitchen, with a board over the top that doubled up as a work top except on friday nights, when we had our bath.
I would say though that me and my two sisters had a very happy childhood. We weren't missing out on anything because nobody we knew had any mod cons.
The excitement of going to my grandparents and going to the lavatory outside. They had an indoor one too but outside was a lot more fun with the garden equipment and the spiders' webs and that outdoor smell of dust and mud.
Ah so that's the reason why you pee in the streets, old habits.
My Gran and Granpa had a holiday cottage in Shropshire in the 70s.
No road, lane or even a path.You climbed a stile and went over a small field, full of scary cows.
(I suppose we must have parked nearby somewhere but can't remember)
No elec, just oil lamps.
Only cold water from the well into the Belfast sink in kitchen (hand pump)
Something in the well broke every day and my Dad could only fix it with Mum's tights.
Me and my sister got milk and eggs every day from neighbouring farm.
Chemical toilet in knackered barn, right in the middle of a huge space. Quite unnerving.
Shotgun and traps for pheasant and rabbit.
I suppose there must have been a wood burning range since I remember delicious meals.
We went a few times. Great memories.
RobinofLoxley - you lightweight!!:D:D We poor, impoverished people didn't know what a holiday was let alone have a cottage!!:D
Same here! Saw the Beatles, Stones, Who, Jimi Hendrix, Animals, Dylan, Doors and hundreds more! Great time to be growing up. And the clothes! Wonderful to be able to buy real teenage clothes.
Was so used to growing up in a cold house, nowadays I cannot stand central heating and too warm houses. Just piut on a jumper and have loads of throws on the sofa!
Don't think my mother had a ready-meal in her life. All the veg was fresh from my father's allotment; great excitement wshen fresh peas and raspberries came into season. He stored potatoes and apples in the cellar as well as onion 'strings' to see us through the winter.
The range of food available was very limited by todays standards and, I must admit, that is what I would miss most if we had to go back to a 60's diet
When you look back at the music scene of the 60s, it's really startling to see the famous names that went to little local places. I have a poster from a local Beatles appearance where the tickets were 7 shillings and sixpence, ie 37and a half pence. That's if you bought in advance - 8s and 6d on the door, 5p more. That same venue had the Stones and Hendrix and lots more.
I agree about the food. The other thing I wouldn't want back is the way Sundays were then - very very dull.
We lived ina tenement with toilet outside on the landing shared with two other families. Each family took turns at cleaning and providing toilet paper. Some put in proper toilet roll and some just put squares of newspaper. The elderly man next door used to go down and empty his bin down the toilet! Didn't go down well with the women from the other flats.
My early days were during WW2 , house 2 up 2 down , outside loo , no TV and we had to take the batteries for the radio to the ironmongers for charging , no fridge just a cold room , the milkman come to the street with horse and cart with churns on it where he used ladels to measure out the milk into your own juggs , never had to lock the doors , if Mam was not seen during the day neighbours always called to check if she was OK , people seemed to be much more friendly back then , mostly happy days
we were lucky we lived in Army quarters for most of my childhood which at the time were okay. We had a couple of really nice houses one in Germany which I remember having a basement, proper attic etc, another in Saudi Arabia (massive rooms, 3 floors, own swimming pool, 4 bathrooms, massive kitchen). As all our houses were officer quarters they were a decent size. Then when I was 16 my parents moved to the house they still live in which is a really nice house.
we were lucky we lived in Army quarters for most of my childhood which at the time were okay. We had a couple of really nice houses one in Germany which I remember having a basement, proper attic etc, another in Saudi Arabia (massive rooms, 3 floors, own swimming pool, 4 bathrooms, massive kitchen). As all our houses were officer quarters they were a decent size. Then when I was 16 my parents moved to the house they still live in which is a really nice house.
I was so envious of a friend I met at Grammar school. Her Dad was in the RAF and I went to stay at her house on the RAF base one weekend and to me it was the height of luxury. It was a bungalow but it was centrally heated, had big light rooms and the bedrooms had white fitted wardrobes etc. I had never seen fitted stuff before. It also had fitted carpets which I was not used to. We had lino or tiled floors with rugs.
On the base was a swimming pool, bowling alley, cinema, shops .... I was well impressed.
When my family moved house, our house was a typical semi-detached built in the 30s and it had a coalhouse & an outside toilet next to it in the back garden. I remember the toilet being large (plenty of room around as it had a big belfast sink with a sideboard as well - I guess the previous owners must have used it as an ulilty room then as my mother never used it) & the ceiling covered in cobwebs with dead spiders/flies. The toilet was never used as I remember it being filled up with garden equipment & outdoor toys.
Now both places no longer exist as my parents had the kitchen extended over them in the early 70s.
The coat closet in the hall was converted into a w/c at the same time too.
The house I live in now still has an outside toilet (and an indoor one ) it also has a cobbled coal pit and a brick washing machine type thing where you fill the basin with water and light a fire underneath it
I was born in the mid 1950s and we lived in a wooden bungalow in a farming community. When I was born the bungalow had no electricity, the lights were gas powered, and no mains water, rain water was collected from the roof into a tank. The only heating was a coal fire. The toilet was outside and was a wooden seat over a bucket which was emptied, weekly I think, by a lorry that visited all the houses in the area. When I was still quite young I can remember the pipes being laid in the area for mains water, and the electricity being connected.
When I was about 8 we moved up the road into a bigger house, with an indoor bathroom. There was still no central heating and in the winter my bedroom window would have ice on the inside. Happy days.
- Outside toilet with no flush. We had a big water tank with a tap next to it that we would use to fill a bucket in order to flush. Of course, this tank had to be filled once a week by bucket.
- Two coal fires and later one Calor gas heater provided the only warmth in the house. This along with old sash windows made for some interesting mornings in the winter. You know the way people spray fake snow onto the bottom of their windows at Christmas? We didn't need to do that, we had a thick layer of frost on the inside of the windows from October to March.
- A grand total of five electric lights and three sockets in a house with four bedrooms, two living rooms, a kitchen and a dining room.
- Mice, rats, cockroaches and birds in the attic.
- A po under the bed so you didn't have to walk to the bottom of the garden in the middle of the night
- If the wind was blowing in the wrong direction then the whole house would fill with smoke. The only way to get rid of it was to open all the doors and windows. Again, fun in December.
- No hot running water, just a single tap in the kitchen which dribbled out freezing cold water.
- Tin bath in front of the fire.
The year?
1987.
Wouldn't have missed it for the world though. Great times.
We had a posh (we thought) indoor loo put in about 1972 when I was 10. Still had the tin bath that was brought in front of the fire on a friday night until 1978. Hot water on tap didn't arrive until 1976.
Didn't get a TV until 1973 and that was a tiny black and white, shortly after we had electric put in. Previously it was gas light and open fires with a range type stove.
Don't remember feeling deprived in any way though I wouldn't really want to go back to that exactly now.
Looking back I admire my Grandmother very much for being able to keep us and the home so clean it can't have been easy.
I was born in 1980 so I didn't experience a lot of things mentioned here but I'm not sure the kids of today could cope with waking up in Winter with the ice on the insides of the windows or the 50p electricity meter running out and the house going dark!! We didn't have central heating until I was about 10, before that it was a two bar electric fire in the living room and a big storage heater in the kitchen that had bricks inside that me and my brother used to sit on as it was the warmest place We had an indoor bathroom as well as an outside loo but we kept the outside one because Dad used to love gardening and tinkering with cars and it kept his dirty feet out of the house :rolleyes:
I was born in 1980 so I didn't experience a lot of things mentioned here but I'm not sure the kids of today could cope with waking up in Winter with the ice on the insides of the windows or the 50p electricity meter running out and the house going dark!! We didn't have central heating until I was about 10, before that it was a two bar electric fire in the living room and a big storage heater in the kitchen that had bricks inside that me and my brother used to sit on as it was the warmest place We had an indoor bathroom as well as an outside loo but we kept the outside one because Dad used to love gardening and tinkering with cars and it kept his dirty feet out of the house :rolleyes:
I forgot about the 50p in the meter.
I remember my great-grandmother spending ages filing down the edges of old, pre-decimal coins so the meter would think they were fifties.
Comments
We had coal fires and no electricity, we used paraffin lamps instead. No bath either, we used a tin bath. When I was about 6 we moved into a council heat which had electricity and a proper bathroom and open fires, no central heating. We had no phone, no washing machine, no fridge but we did have a mangle and a copper for doing the washing.
I had left home before my parents got the phone which would be 1970's. Prior to that I just about lived in the phone box down the road!:) We had no car until I was about 15 and we wouldn't have had that but somebody died and left one to my Dad.
Having said all that, in comparison to other local families we were quite well off because there were only 3 kids in our family. Many had 6, 8 and 10 kids and were really, really poor. Also both my parents could turn their hands to anything so my Dad grew loads of veg and fruit for us and Mum always cooked great, healthy meals.
But was it fun to be living like that in 1996? That's what the thread is about:
If everyone around you is living the same lifestyle then you don't feel you are missing out. If you are surrounded by people in a better situation than you then it's less fun.
My grandparents house was fun. They were born in the 1890's and lived in this house till the late 70's. It was a big spartan house, at least four bedrooms with hardly anything in them except bed, chair, dressing table, maybe a rug on the floor. Huge garden, cobwebbed outhouses, one was their outside toilet, they never saw the need for an indoor one.
They had huge ornate chamber pots under the bed. Looked like they were made of china, with lids on. And a little one for me. Once while staying over when I was about 5, I woke up needing the chamber pot. I climbed out of the very high up bed, and reached for the pot in the dark - the next thing I knew I was crying for help and running round in a void - I couldn't find the bed, let alone the chamber pot!
It's something you never live down as a kid isn't it? If everyone had it then yes, but if you're the only one its really embarrassing!
Same here! Saw the Beatles, Stones, Who, Jimi Hendrix, Animals, Dylan, Doors and hundreds more! Great time to be growing up. And the clothes! Wonderful to be able to buy real teenage clothes.
Was so used to growing up in a cold house, nowadays I cannot stand central heating and too warm houses. Just piut on a jumper and have loads of throws on the sofa!
Don't think my mother had a ready-meal in her life. All the veg was fresh from my father's allotment; great excitement wshen fresh peas and raspberries came into season. He stored potatoes and apples in the cellar as well as onion 'strings' to see us through the winter.
The range of food available was very limited by todays standards and, I must admit, that is what I would miss most if we had to go back to a 60's diet
No road, lane or even a path.You climbed a stile and went over a small field, full of scary cows.
(I suppose we must have parked nearby somewhere but can't remember)
No elec, just oil lamps.
Only cold water from the well into the Belfast sink in kitchen (hand pump)
Something in the well broke every day and my Dad could only fix it with Mum's tights.
Me and my sister got milk and eggs every day from neighbouring farm.
Chemical toilet in knackered barn, right in the middle of a huge space. Quite unnerving.
Shotgun and traps for pheasant and rabbit.
I suppose there must have been a wood burning range since I remember delicious meals.
We went a few times. Great memories.
My grandparents lived in a terraced house with outside toilet and no bathroom. The only tap was in the kitchen and hot water was a gas geyser above the sink. They had a tin bath. No TV just a radio. The house was freezing as they only had a coal fire in the sitting room.
I would say though that me and my two sisters had a very happy childhood. We weren't missing out on anything because nobody we knew had any mod cons.
Ah so that's the reason why you pee in the streets, old habits.
RobinofLoxley - you lightweight!!:D:D We poor, impoverished people didn't know what a holiday was let alone have a cottage!!:D
When you look back at the music scene of the 60s, it's really startling to see the famous names that went to little local places. I have a poster from a local Beatles appearance where the tickets were 7 shillings and sixpence, ie 37and a half pence. That's if you bought in advance - 8s and 6d on the door, 5p more. That same venue had the Stones and Hendrix and lots more.
I agree about the food. The other thing I wouldn't want back is the way Sundays were then - very very dull.
I was so envious of a friend I met at Grammar school. Her Dad was in the RAF and I went to stay at her house on the RAF base one weekend and to me it was the height of luxury. It was a bungalow but it was centrally heated, had big light rooms and the bedrooms had white fitted wardrobes etc. I had never seen fitted stuff before. It also had fitted carpets which I was not used to. We had lino or tiled floors with rugs.
On the base was a swimming pool, bowling alley, cinema, shops .... I was well impressed.
Now both places no longer exist as my parents had the kitchen extended over them in the early 70s.
The coat closet in the hall was converted into a w/c at the same time too.
When I was about 8 we moved up the road into a bigger house, with an indoor bathroom. There was still no central heating and in the winter my bedroom window would have ice on the inside. Happy days.
- Outside toilet with no flush. We had a big water tank with a tap next to it that we would use to fill a bucket in order to flush. Of course, this tank had to be filled once a week by bucket.
- Two coal fires and later one Calor gas heater provided the only warmth in the house. This along with old sash windows made for some interesting mornings in the winter. You know the way people spray fake snow onto the bottom of their windows at Christmas? We didn't need to do that, we had a thick layer of frost on the inside of the windows from October to March.
- A grand total of five electric lights and three sockets in a house with four bedrooms, two living rooms, a kitchen and a dining room.
- Mice, rats, cockroaches and birds in the attic.
- A po under the bed so you didn't have to walk to the bottom of the garden in the middle of the night
- If the wind was blowing in the wrong direction then the whole house would fill with smoke. The only way to get rid of it was to open all the doors and windows. Again, fun in December.
- No hot running water, just a single tap in the kitchen which dribbled out freezing cold water.
- Tin bath in front of the fire.
The year?
1987.
Wouldn't have missed it for the world though. Great times.
Didn't get a TV until 1973 and that was a tiny black and white, shortly after we had electric put in. Previously it was gas light and open fires with a range type stove.
Don't remember feeling deprived in any way though I wouldn't really want to go back to that exactly now.
Looking back I admire my Grandmother very much for being able to keep us and the home so clean it can't have been easy.
I forgot about the 50p in the meter.
I remember my great-grandmother spending ages filing down the edges of old, pre-decimal coins so the meter would think they were fifties.
Worked a treat.
Luxury!