I used to share a room with my younger brother, sleeping in bunk beds. I remember one winter being really cold when he was about 4 and I would have been 8, and letting him climb down and get into my bed with me because he was shivering. We used to lie and look at the paraffin heater on the landing until we went to sleep.

Edit: 1981 / 82 was the year I think.

I have had no central heating for the last 3 weeks and the new boiler is not due to be installed for another 2 weeks! It is cold, cold like the cold of my childhood!!!! However, with lots of fur and fleece throws, fleece pjs, big fleecy slippers, and a woolly hat, I am quite warm.......but am having to wipe the frost off the inside of windows, get dressed in front of an electric fire, and type in gloves.......just like being a kid again!

Yes, we are tougher!

I remember all this, but don't really remember feeling cold. Mum used to dress and undress us in front of the coal fire, and we must have had plenty of blankets on the bed, because I wasn't cold in bed either.

I can remember the first time I encountered central heating though. It was when we were posted to Germany (1967/8), and we walked into our new home, and the warmth was nearly overwheming.

I'm surprised that nobody has mentioned string vests and the brown paper + vick that was needed to cure the pneumonia caused by the string vest.

Salt glaze or rubber ?

In general we were healthier for what we did and what we ate , and we tolerated things better and were not so sickly.

The bib made me laugh as it reminded me of a mate of mine who for years refused to have central heating installed in his house "because of the bills"!

He woke up one winter morning and pulled the curtains open only to have one rip as it had froze solid to the inside of the window!

The tight wad has since had central heating in and now 'feels the cold'!

and liberty bodices with their impossible rubber buttons!

Come around to my house and you can see for yourself.

I still cope like that as we barely put the central heating on, and there is just a solid fuel range stove downstairs.

I far prefer a cold bedroom and am not really keen on artificial room heat which dries the air and makes me cough.
O/h and I sleep in separate bedrooms though we invariably spend quite a few evenings together and moreso when it's cold.

I find central heating gives me bad sinuses so I have it on for a while then turn it off if going to bed and put it to come on an hour before I get up. ( oh and leave it on when away at a low temp so pipes don't freeze in winter )

Thank goodness I'm a bit too young *cough* for them

It was my eiderdown that I remember. Cotton sheets, blankets, and a candlewick bedspread but under the candlewick was the eiderdown. That and a hot water bottle made for comfy nights despite the ice on the inside of the window.

However....school skirts and wellies did nothing for the knees during a mile and a half walk to school through deep snow. Our headmistress lived in the school house so it was always open.

Back in the late '60's we couldn't afford a brand new mattress and I remember our Dad getting a second hand one from a house clearance. To add to our perishing cold winters the bloody mattress was rife with fleas. I can still remember laying in bed on freezing cold nights catching fleas by candle light and squashing them between my two thumb nails until the blood popped out of the little bastards.

Stay close to the fire and cuddle together on the sofa. Sometimes share a bed if it was really cold. Keep your vest on under your pyjamas - and, of course, hot water bottles.

My Nan could still remember living in houses that were so cold the fire caused condensation on the walls. She said the boys would have goose fat rubbed over them and be sewn into their shirts for the winter.

Oh, yes! Very few people I knew had cars and, if the buses were not running, like you, I had to walk to school whatever the weather. Deep snow was simply not an excuse for not getting to school - it was just expected that you would attend. I do recall that occasionally we were allowed to leave early if it was snowing heavily and getting dark.

Can so remember the layer of ice on the insides of the windows. We lived in a council house that had metered hot air heating. We kids used to fight to sit next to the heating vent in the front room. I can also remember the never ending struggle to have enough coins to feed the heating system. The sheer joy when mum or dad came back from the shops having got change for the meter in the middle of winter. Bah kids today don't know they are born.

I remember when we had just moved house in 1986 to a house in the sticks on the Lincolnshire wolds. The heating was fun by a coal fire and we were without coal as the coalman couldn't get through and it was well over a week before the roads were passable for his lorry. Luckily the previous neighbours had left loads of burnable junk, such as old kitchen units and an old aviary, bits of wood etc. I remember my dad chopping it all for burning in the house. I remember my mum even chucking old shoes on to keep things going. It was a bloody terrible winter. I remember my bed being piled high with blankets and coats, ice on the windows etc. I think it was well into the 1990s before my mum decided to buy duvets. The coal fire ony came out about 10 years ago too. Miss it sometimes as the heat isn't as drying oil central heating seems to be, but I don't miss the mess and hassle of cleaning the grate, making a fire and keeping it stoked up.

Earlier this year in the summer. I visited the site of one of the houses my mum and aunt grew up in during the late 50s, early 60s. Now that was remote and basic. Located up a stony farm track about a mile from the main road, water supply from the spring at the bottom of the meadow, outside earth closet and no electricty apart from a generator my grandfather had got. My aunt told me about the winter of 62 ( I think it was) and how the snow drifts were huge and they were unable to get out for weeks and even by May there were still patches of snow hung around in the bottoms of hedges. Hear the story every year from my mum, but being there and hearing it from my aunt who is a bit older than my mum so remembers a bit more really brought it to life.

It's precisely because I used to cope with blankets, one [paraffin] fire, freezing windows and rooms that I make bloody sure my house is now warm enough for me to walk around in my undies during the winter. Sod the expense.

I like it cold in the summer though, and put the air-con on.

I was going to mention the liberty bodice. What about the Haliborange tablet and castor oil every Sunday after the weekly bath We had a 3 bedroom house and us kids shared a double bed. Lived in the sitting room with the coal fire.

Bedroom was bloody freezing and got dressed for school under the covers.

Our first married home only had a coal fire in the living room and bedroom. We had a lot of fun in the bedroom

FWIW, I seem to recall that Mythbusters did a feature on coal fires and proved that they do make unheated rooms colder because they draw air through the house, into the room where the fire is and up the chimney.
And, of course, all that air is all arriving in your house from outside, where it's cold enough to make you decide to light a fire in the first place.

How did we cope with blankets?

We all had electric ones.

No central heating but storage heaters and a gas or electric fire in every room. I do remember piano/violin practice being in the coldest/biggest room in the house and virtually sitting on top of the small electric fire. My hands used to get so cold at the piano, not so bad the violin, you at least get to move around a bit.

WE just coped. However I didn't sleep naked in those days.

Of course people just got on with it, that's what you do, but improvements in home heating were made, I assume, because people really didn't like freezing their arses off in cold weather. Kids today would cope just as well if they had to because kids are resilient. Or are we trying to pretend that all of us as kids never bitched and moaned about stuff?

I remember always getting told off for running past the paraffin heater on the landing. My mum used to make draught excluders that looked like giant snakes that we used to pile around the doors
Daren't leave anything on the window sill in the bedroom as it would get soaked from condensation as well
(Best memory though is sitting around the fire toasting crumpets and bread. I always managed to let my crumpet fall into the fire so it always tasted of coal)

Me too. I can put up with most things but being cold is not one of them - too many memories of feeling cold to the bone.