The winter of '63 was the coldest and went on for longer, it didn't go above freezing for a 19 day stretch. I was a Plumber and in living in an unheated terraced cottage. We had 2 Coal fires one in living-room heated the Hot water via a Redfyre 4A back-boiler. the other in the Front-room where we had a Studio-Couch( remember them) that winter the wife and I slept in front room on the Couch and kept fire alight all night.
I was working all hours thawing pipes and repairing bursts ,loads of wages for working overtime. Water-Mains were frozen in the ground and an Engineer in the village was making loads of money thawing mains with his Electric Welder which was mounted on a trailer with a portable engine. This of course would now be impossible with the advent of Plastic water mains. water regulations brought in since that hard winter insist mains are a minimum of 2ft6in deep in ground to prevent freezing, previously quite a lot were only approx 18in deep.

I grew up in the 80's and can remember having single glazed windows that used to go frosty on the inside. Also we had no central heating system, just one of those gas heaters that we were warned not to go too near. I certainly find the cold easier to deal with than the heat of summer. Maybe because I was a winter baby, but I think the winter has been mild so far this year. Thankfully most young people won't have to know how badly things can be, I wouldn't wish that on anyone. Why do we invent central heating systems if we think we are tough enough to endure? It makes no sense.

The coo doesn't faze me, fortunately. My former occupation involved spending many nights outdoors in Norway, in winter. They didn't call it the Cold War for nothing.

My mother used to bank up the coal fire with slack and potato peelings, during the day. Of course, it gave out little heat for hours but, once it began to burn through, we had a lovely fire.

Did anyone else have to hold a sheet of newspaper over the grate to get a coal fire to catch? Health and Safety would have had a field day had it existed then.

Oh yes I remember, my dad was a dab hand at that.

Oh yes. It used to catch fire regularly. The art was to stuff it in the fireplace without setting fire to yourself in the process.

Yes, there was definitely a skill to it!

We didn't get central heating until around 2000, probably the last in the street to do so. Our house backs on to the River Medway near where the estuary meets the sea with not a tree nor building to slow the harsh winds. my dad told me of a story of when in the 1940s the river froze over and you you walk to the Isle of Grain from on it. I don't know how much of this I believe.

I hate being cold - there's no need for it today. When I first moved from my hometown I was a lodger with a family in a town in the SE. The people I lived with were so mean! There was never any hot water and the heating would be on for an hour in the morning and an hour in the evening. This was winter 2012 which was a cold one. It was so bad my room was full of condensation and mould. Thankfully I'm now in a new flat which is warm even without having the heating on much. I'm currently staying with my parents for Christmas and I'm struggling in their house as it's much older and bigger and they don't have the heating on much! The lovely thing they do have is a log-burning stove in the living room - toasty!

My parents bought their house in 1974 and had gas central heating installed. By the time I was born we had double glazing throughout as well. However, my Mother told me that when she was young in the late 50s they had a coal fire in the living room and sitting room and electric fires in the bedrooms. The coal fire used to spit or something and once the cat briefly caught fire when a spark hit his back and another time my Mother lit the fire and it blew up and burnt her eyebrows and the front of her hair off. It had some sort of gas tap that lit it evidently.

Some of us still do.

Sitting here just now wearing a tshirt, 2 jumpers, jeans, thick socks and furry boot and still freezing. Our kettle is hardly off. We aren't allowed double glazing in our houses and as we live right on the sea it is always freezing during the winter. Draughts galore. Our kids were brought up like this and are well aware of the frost patterns on the insides of the windows. It didn't do them any harm though.

We didn't have much as kids in the '70s, but we moved into a new build council house in '74 which had ceiling heating. Yes, heating via the ceiling! We had an electric fire in the living room (which I would sit at to dry my hair), and a pile of blankets on our beds. I don't remember feeling cold. I think my parents always sacrificed other things to give us heat. I was almost three when we moved there, and have no memory of using the outside toilets and coal fire which we had in the previous house.

My sister and I had the luxury of a paraffin heater in our bedroom! Mind you, we still had to get up in the freezing cold to put it on (and scrape the ice off the inside of the window). Don't know about duvets, but we had these old things we called quilts - They had probably been in the family 100 years even then. I used to put my school clothes on back under the bedclothes as it was a far warmer prospect because, of course, we only washed properly once a week on Sunday evenings.

In front of a roaring coal fire, towel and pj's hanging on the side fire guard to warm up

This is a fab thread and brings back a lot of memories

I didn't live in a house with proper central heating until 2000 (when I was 40). I wouldn't like to go back to scraping the windows even if the patterns were lovely.

I had a great big thick eiderdown on my bed and a hot water bottle in the winter. It wasn't fun on the odd occasion the bottle leaked and you had a bed full of cold water


Yes, frequently It was an art getting the coal shovel to stand up in the grate and then put the paper on. Timing was critical to whip the newspaper away when the edges beyond the shovel started to go brown.
Some of our posher neighbours had a proper metal blazer to do this.

I suppose you also walked 10 miles barefoot to school in 10 ft of snow?

My dad only ever put the storage heaters on in the living room if it snowed, The rest of the year he had an electric fire with a fire effect lamp on it and said we would feel warmer with the lamp on and never turned the bars on.

His saying was if your cold put your ****ing coat on!

Growing up in the 70s I can remember the ice inside my bedroom window. My mum used to put a hot water bottle in everyone's beds each night. I also remember dreading having to get up in the night for a pee and the race to the bathroom and back to the warm bed. Central heating finally got fitted in about 80/81, before that we just had a gas fire in the living room. I wouldn't change it, though. All part of life and it's only natural that things progress. My grandparents never had an inside toilet when they were little.

Gosh!! All these tales bring back memories!

I remember we had a coal fire in the living room so we all huddled round it in the winter. Our fronts were toasty warm but our backs were freezing!!

The winter of '63/'64 (?) dreadful!! It began snowing on Boxing Day and I think it snowed just about every day until Easter. School stayed open and I remember 'Miss' placing the small bottles of milk (now frozen) by the radiator. I've never drunk milk since!!

Mum would light the oven in the kitchen and leave its door open. We would get dressed in there.

When I left home to go to teacher training college in 1971, i was in digs. The house had central heating except in the room where we students slept! In the morning, I'd pop my undies into bed when I got up so that they weren't so cold when I got dressed.

Where we tougher?Yes, but there was really no alternative. My sister was a bit sickly and I know she found the winter very trying. Yes, we had vitamin orange tabs and a concoction called Radio Malt. Heaven on a spoon!!

Oh forgot about the malt. I used to nick it out the bottle when my mum was busy, loved it.

I was born in '72 and grew up in an old weavers cottage which my parents bought as a fixer upper. There was an open fireplace in each room and presumably some kind of Aga type cooker in the kitchen's one. We had a brick built lean to coal shed. I remember how the living rooms were laid out differently then, chairs and couches arranged round the fire and when it was roaring you'd turn around to avoid getting corned beef legs. Remember the contrast of the heat on your face but the cold at your back? My granny had an outdoor toilet, you were feart to sit down incase your erse froze to the seat.

I remember happy times going with my dad on freezing cold days to the local hardware shop in his van to swap out the calor gas bottles for the calor gas heater that we used to have. I still love the smell of those, along with paraffin when you walk in the hardware shop, so nostalgic.

Dangerous those when you think about them.

Did anybody used to have one of those 1970s wooden surround gas fires with the ceramic bricks in and the light up orange alcoves at the side? My mum used to put ornaments in ours.

My mother lived in a old Victorian house until she was nearly ninety, and only had coal fires for heating. The visiting social worker was absolutely horrified to see her drawing a fire with a sheet of newspaper but , as my mother pointed out, she had been doing so for the last 80 years or so and wasn't going to change now!

Ah, memories
I can remember my mum setting off to clean upstairs decked out in hat, scarf and gloves, the toothpaste freezing in the tube and the alarm clock freezing up.
I can remember dad rigging up a light from a car battery and headlight in the power cuts of the 70's so I could still do my homework and sitting round the paraffin heater looking out at the next street waiting for their lights to go off which meant ours were coming back on.