Right now, I'd give anything to have a house with double glazing and central heating. How I miss it! My house just now has electric storage heaters which cost a fortune and being single glazed with ceilings that go on forever, there's no point trying to heat the place. We have the heater in the living room on, but that's it. At the moment, our hall is so cold, we're sitting all of our juice, milk etc in it as the fridge is full.

I remember growing up in the 80s with a gas heater in my bedroom and metal framed single glazed windows that whistled at night. The frost patterns amazed me! I hated being tucked in under itchy blankets (they irritated my eczema and made me bleed on occasion), but now having an electric blanket is amazing. I'm still tucked up in bed with it on right now

That's why fire is really "Nature's telly", because everybody can sit around looking at it and feel entertained.

We have storage heating in the living-room and hallway (which is used to dry clothes), so it's pretty cold until we turn it on at around 7pm (so that we have heat until around 11), but by then the room's pretty cold so you don't feel the warmth as much as it's hard for that seemingly not very hot heat to heat a cold room.

The bedrooms have electric convector heaters, way too expensive to use much so there are 4 x half-hour slots that the timer's set to go on, those are the times when you can go in and get dressed or undressed, otherwise you freeze.

Layers, as my mother (and the Scandinavians) would say, are the key to keeping warm, layers and the wonderful invention called microfleece Any manmade fibre in fact, non-breathable, keeps the heat in (and the sweat too )

My great aunt and second cousin lived in the next village, and as I had no living grandparents, the two old ladies were like grandmas to me. They both cooked/baked/dried clothes on Victorian ranges well into the 1980s when one aunty finally got an electric oven - which she hated as she could no longer bake her amazing cakes in it, being used to calculating times and things for a range. The other aunty had a toilet in the back yard that was simply a hole cut into sheer rock, that went down about 30 foot to a stream, below. I was fascinated by the toilet. Apparently, her sister's baby fell down it and drowned in the 1910s but I wasn't told that as a child.

Her house was a Tudor cottage that had a ship's staircase coming down into the kitchen. I think it belonged to an ancestor of our's, as I now know we had a ship-owning ancestor in the village in the 1820s. Although it will have gone out of the family and come back in. I found out about ten years ago the cottage - long since "improved" - was actually left to my mother and her siblings in the other great aunt's will but this great aunt simply moved into it after the funeral, and refused to move out. Later the house was left in her will (even though it wasn't her's to leave) to the other aunty and now god knows who 'owns' it but it probably belongs to my two cousins, brother and I. I loved that house. Nothing we can do about it but I often pass it and think of knocking on the door and telling the person it was left to my mother in the 1950s... (And can they move out please, as my aunty willed it to someone despite never actually owning it...)

I grew up 5 miles from there in a vast old farmhouse. We had several coal fires downstairs although all but one were boarded up when I was a kid. My dad re-opened one in one of the living rooms, in the 1970s. Upstairs we had gas fires. My parents always slept with the windows open, summer and winter, so I do. I never had one of them candlewick bed covers - we always had big, ancient silk or faux silk, eiderdowns. Then blankets as well if you were cold. Those old pure wool Witney blankets, with the stripe.

To this day although I have coal fired central heating, I sleep with the window open even midwinter. Seems unhealthy to me not to.

We used to have a toasting fork and make toast for supper, on the fire. My fire is a Parkray with a glass font now so can't do that.

Loving this thread Mrs T

For those young whippersnappers who don’t remember blankets, I think the sheer number of them would astonish you.

I remember staying with my gran in her freezing cold house, and on the guest bed where I slept there was a flannelette candystripe undersheet, an oversheet, a pink cellular blanket with satin rim, a Welsh ‘carthen’ blanket like this: https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com...6632c92637.jpg, a yellow cellular blanket, a purple candlewick bedspread, and a rug type thing on the lower half of the bed.

The weight of these psychedelic-coloured bedclothes alone was quite formidable, and when granny came to ‘tuck you in’ there was no hope of even turning over until you were released in the morning.

I am a big fan of bedspreads, my daughter and I both have one over our quilts and they make the bed very warm and toasty, almost too warm at times.

I'd never heard it called that before!!

Very apt!!

Still wiping laughter tears from my eyes after reading this.....Oh the many happy memories

Still laughing ......

I'm starting to appreciate spending a lot of my formative years in hot countries

I don't remember being cold in bed. I slept with my sister and we had a hot water bottle each in place before we got into bed. We had bobbly flannelette sheets, blankets, eiderdown and a bedspread. Plus at least one cat. I remember it all being very heavy and constantly the mass all ended up on one side and the floor. Getting out of bed and getting washed/dressed was another matter!
There was also a coal fire in our bedroom but that was only lit if we were ill with at least 10 foot snow drifts outside!
My father installed a solid fuel central heating system, he was a tight wad. As he was without plumbing qualifications and much to my mother's disdain, it never worked properly and rarely worked upstairs.
I still don't like warm bedrooms and rarely use the radiator.

I was 7, and remember it well. Even in Croydon it was bitterly cold and the snow lay around from Boxing Day night until well into March.

The water in our outdoor (and only) toilet froze, both in the pan and in the cistern. If you wanted a poo, you had to boil a kettle, get up on a stepladder and pour the boiling water into the cistern and pan well in advance to thaw it out so you could flush it. We had burst pipes and part of a ceiling came down.

My mum interleaved the blankets on the beds with newspaper, because of its insulating properties. It rustled a bit, but it helped keep you warm. My gran was worried about us living in such a cold, draughty flat and bought us electric blankets, so we had warm beds to get into, but you couldn't leave them on all night. We had a very soppy tabby cat who would get into bed with me and lie alongside me all night, he was better than any hot water bottle.

It sounds positively Dickensian now.

Some great trips down memory lane, thanks everyone

I know people who regularly fished all night in the winter when it was usually a lot colder than it is now. This was in the days before all the modern equipment and lightweight thermal clothing, so they were bedding down in the snow under an umbrella, protected only by blankets and extra layers of clothing. Some people bought ex-army tank suits and massively oversized wellies, which they cut down the front and inserted lace holes, so that they could wear several pairs of socks.

Mind you, they were obviously mad.

Think the Big Snow was 1963. My Granda died during that. Mum says they had powerful bother getting him out of the house. It really does sound Dickensian. I never asked for details.

Stop making me laugh out loud 'til I am crying you lot, my husband keeps looking at me as if I am mad.....

I was wondering if anyone was going to mention the blankets that were full of 'holes'! Also the 'Fluff'y sheets courtesy of Brentford Nylons. Our posh uncle had a circular electic bedwarmer thingy - the forerunner of electric blankets, and a teasmaid to wake up to - in theory.

The trick with coal fires was to stack them up just before you went to bed and then smother them with cinders. That way you could come down stairs 8 hours later, scrape away the cinders and the remnants of the fire would still be burning slowly underneath. No need to light a new fire and the room still had some residual warmth.

The malt extract I was fed to 'build me up' was disgusting. Little better than the painted aloes solution for naill-biting.

Recently saw a picture of my primary school year when we were about 5yrs old. This would have been the early to mid 60s. By modern standards we were a markedly small, sickly and unhappy looking class - more 19th century poor school than 21st century in aspect. But it didn't seem particularly cheerless at the time.

Don't believe we were tougher or physically more resilient then - quite the reverse. What we experienced was simply normal for the times, just as now. There were different parental expectations regarding the health of their offspring. The most visible difference between then and now is obesity. There would only be 1 or 2 'fat kids' in a junior school of 500 or so

I was born that January (1963)... apparently with blue lips from the cold, although that may just be story-telling

We used to have heat lamps instead of regular light-bulbs that we used to put on when we got back from school so that they would take the chill off the bedroom.
We had a parafin heater for a while but my dad got rid of it after there was a fire in someone's house that burnt down that was thought to have been started by one.
I remember being allowed to bring my bike in at night and keep it in the hallway so it wouldn't be frozen to cycle to school on

Probably. I was told there were huge snow drifts up the front door, as tall as a man!!!1!! And imagine that contrary old duffer choosing that time to go. Aye, some of them are indeed fond of a yarn. I love listening to their old stories, spin and all.

Yes good old thick liberty bodices. Those nasty buttons were boil proof apparently, back in the day when cotton whites were all boiled.
No wonder I didn't feel the cold much wearing one of those.

That's how I do my coal rayburn now. A good shovelful of cinders/ashes on the coals before bed, shut the flues, and the fire 'keeps in' all night.


Ha my parents are always on about the spoonful of 'malt' they had to have.
And a spoonful of castor oil twice a week.

I used to stay with my paternal grandparents every Friday night when I was very young and they always had a coal fire in their bungalow. My granddad used to do what you describe above, and I remember going out across the back garden in the deep snow in my pyjamas and wellies in the morning with the bucket to fetch coal back from the coal bunker.

aye, you got outa bed and ywere damn careful not to be killed by the icicle hanging off yer nose

my memories are identical to this.

I remember, my mum used to put our clothes in front of the fire so we put them on warm. We always saw our breathe when we got up and often, mum had to boil a kettle, left from the night before for us to wash with as the immersion only went on in the evening.

mum also always left four gas rings in very low so the heat would go upstairs for bed time.