What are your childhood memories of your grandparents' house?

Rock

My dd is definitely lacking GPs. She has only 2 and they are both useless,

The smell of the pink china pomander with flowers on. I still have it in a box in the loft, and it still smells the same! (No loss of scent, I mean.)

The linoleum in the space between the carpet and the walls - no fitted carpets for Gran!

The spaniel ornament on the living room windowsill

The drying greens out the back

The display cabinet with photos of grandchildren on

Rock

Your memories are lovely.

The smell of my grandma's powder and lipstick.
Hairy curlers.
The smell of sprouts.
The cupboard in the hall smell - shoe polish with a faint undercurrent of washing powder.
Ironing knickers.
Dippy egg and soldiers.
The taste of real butter in sandwiches.
The sound grandma made when she kissed my cheek (a proper 'smacker').
The opening credits of Corrie.

Course, I'm living in it now. But, by golly, I miss my darling grandma.

Right, I have gathered myself

Cuckoo call from what always seemed to be right outside my bedroom window.

Loving the fact that one of the bedrooms in their house was known as 'RockStock's Room' as I was the first grandchild to stay there after they bought the house just after I was born.

Listening out for Pa first thing in the morning and then running as fast and as loudly as I could to leap into their bed so I could sit next to Grannie when we supped tea in bed that Pa had gone to make.

Playing Pooh Sticks for ever when we took their 3 dogs for long walks through the meadows behind Long Melford.

Making drop scones with Grannie and burning myself EVERY time, but not giving a shit as it was so much fun.

Chopping onions for Grannie with her (what I thought then) amazing onion chopper thingy wotsit.

The smell of Grannie's Cinzano and whatever it was she mixed it with.

Sneaking into their drawing room to watch Grange Hill. Grannie knew I did but never told my Mum (I was banned from watching it at home!)

Climbing the trees in the garden and falling out of one once, but luckily landing in their pond - pond was pretty big so I splashed rather than hurt!

The thousands of daffodils in what would have been a paddock many moons ago every spring, ditto crocuses and snowdrops peeking through at the end of winter around the garden.

The crunch of the gravel when we drove up the drive. Fighting with my brothers to get out of the car first to swing the gate open.

Afternoon tea, every day without fail.

THE BEST MACARONI CHEESE IN THE WORLD EVER. No has, can or will ever make it like Grannie did. Ditto the best gravy in the world.

The smell of the larder at the end of the house, and then behind another door Pa's workroom with a completely different smell.

Making bottles of sodastream up in what now looks like the most amazing contraption ever!

Helping grannie make her bed up - she taught me hospital corners when I was about 5 and I won't buy fitted sheets just so I can do them on our beds now.

My wonderful grandfather was just amazing. He was a General in the Army but to me he was simply Pa and I wish he could see all that I am my children have achieved. He died when I was just 20, but I still think about him almost everyday.

My Grannie taught me EVERYTHING I know about cooking. It is my true passion and I credit the hours and hours I spent standing on a stool 'helping' her from about the age of 3. She was overjoyed when my DS was born on her birthday and I am so pleased that my three older children have some wonderful memories of her.

OMG - so many.

Sweet peas
Fires
Lime marmalade
"taste of honey"
sewing box
lovely bureau desk
Morning Glories in the sunroom

Strangely, the ones from my maternal grandparents, who we saw more often, are nowhere near as evocative. I am not sure why that is, but I have inherited loads of stuff from my paternal grandparents and it all brings memories flooding back. I determinedly use it all, but have been known to weep over a broken plate or a worn-out teatowel .

I remember being taken to see my ggm. Who lived in the "posh" front room in my aunts house. She had wonderful things in glass cabinets and always gave me 50p - a fortune in 1972.

We had the ultimate solution to not enough chairs, though there were many in my DGPs little flat because Grandad collected antiques. Despite the size of their home there was at times more than 20 of us at Christmas tea. The gatelegged barley twist table would be used, the kitchen table and a formica coffee table for extra dishes. The diners would stretch from far side of the "living room" into the kitchen.

And those young uns without chairs would sit on wooden boards placed across the chairs of two other folk. :)

One pair of antique chairs were rosewood with tapestry covered seats which lifted out, as old ones do. We didn't realise that they had worn a little and the frame had enlarged a bit until Uncle Arthur (a little fella the spit of Arthur Askey) suddenly disappeared downwards, his bum stuck in the framework of the chair seat and his little legs pointing ceilingwards!

OMG what a fantastic thread - has opened up a whole memory box for me!

The yellow garage door.
The sweeping drive with pampas grass either side.
Always a white ford fiesta!
The smell of tomatoes in the greenhouse.
Our initials in the concrete outside the garage.
The gap in the hedge that would lead to the lane down to the horse's field.
Our apple trees planted when we were born.
The lucky rabbit's foot in the pantry drawer.
The homemade curtains with massive hems.
The red stool, just the right height for us to sit on.
Playing mums and dads in the lean-to with the sun beds and pink woollen blankets.
Nanny's Sunday lunch mmmmmmm

Mine are still alive - in fact I was brought up by maternal gps.

Button box - we had a "pouffe" in the corner that contained button delights along with a sock darning mushroom thing that I joke about with dh to this day...My dad always sat on said pouffe when he came round.

Cocktail cabinet - it played tunes when you opened it - only ever at Xmas, famiy wedding etc. It contained all the left over drink from when my auntie got married in 1977. Little cans of ginger ale, bottles of babycham, bols to make snowballs with, glace cherries, cocktail sticks - as children these were things of wonder......

My granma always used to wear those big knee length bloomers I have her sewing box - they were going to throw it away when the house was cleared

They had a stereogram, no telly, that we used to listen to the Archers on. And we used to play Old Maid, Donkey, Happy Families and Kanugo (no, me neither) - Father Christmas had to get for DS last Christmas the Sainsbury's 3 pack set of traditional card games ... I was stunned, they were exactly the same

Getting up reeeeeeeeeaaaaaaaalllllllyyyyyyyy early in the morning to go mushrooming with my granpa or just generally strolling round the fields with the farm dogs and him

The candlewick bedspread on the bed.

yy to sitting on the stepstool because there weren't enough chairs

Enormous sliding doors on one wall of the kitchen that hid pantry shelves

Glass window between the hallway and the kitchen. It had ornaments on the narrow sill.

All the china trinkets in the display cabinet.

Copies of the People's Friend

The funny smell....

The black and red pouffe

Those antimassacar (sp.?) things on the sofa and chairs

Making pancakes with my Gran

And... and..more! The smell of Max Factor powder compact which Nanny used, a rich, sweet smell.
And a trail of sawdust across the floor when Grandad came home from his shop. He always wore a tailor made 3 piece suit with silk backed waistcoat under his white butcher's coat and always had turn-ups tailored into his trousers, which caused the sawdust trail. :)

When I was a kid, about 7 years old, and he was in his 50s he'd lift me into the air by one hand on my stomach as if I was flying and could do chin lifts on the top of the kitchen door.

The white three tier cake tin with the blue lid, and gingerbread and rice cake fresh out of the oven. Toast with Nimble bread and Lurpak butter, which we never got at home, only at Nanna's. She had a "New World Rangette" that was old when I was small and was almost 50 when it finally went bang and gave up the ghost, and her washing machine, in the wash-house out the back, had an enormous "thing" in the middle that sort of threshed the clothes and a mangle attached to the top. Tomato plants in the greenhouse, and the rain barrels outside it.
Granda and nanna having "forty winks" after dinner and the TV always being on Tyne-Tees because neither of them dared change the channel in case they couldn't get it back and missed Emmerdale Farm or Corrie.
Nanna sewing up ladders in her tights, which she called stockings.
My mam's old china dolls, Jane-Anne and Rosemary sitting on the bed in the little bedroom, and we were never allowed to touch them because "they're as old as mam and you might hurt them".
Nanna's silver eidelweiss brooch, and the sparkly treasures (which although I now know were just costume jewwellery from Woolies) were like the crown jewels to us.
Granda taught me the first three verses of Vitae Lampada when I was about 6 and I can still recite it now, and my DCs can chime in "play up, play up, and play the game" in the right place. And we can all sing the Paratrooper Song.
I could go on for hours. Granda has been gone 30 years now, but Nanna is 93 and still going strong :)

aww my grandparents where amazing and Im still lucky to have a nana.

My granda was my favourite adult growing up.
things that remind me of him - barbershop singing, by my heads itchy (he used to scratch our heads as he said it) cheese sanwiches, "wee's supper n bed" "bonny lass" scruffy cardigans, holey slippers, tweed flat cap, button box, capitals of the countries, the "surgery" (table in dining room for broken toys and grazed knees) cigarette cards.............. Why dont we realise what we have until its gone? Wish I could turn back time and chose seeing him over hanging out with my mates when I could still spend time with him.

My grandma refused to wear any knickers if she wore tights

I have my Nan's button box. It was the one thing I asked for 10 years after she'd passed away, when we lost Grandad too.

And what IS it about Nannys wanting to make sure you eat when you visit?! No-one was allowed to leave without having had at least several cups of tea and some home made cake!

ooh and she taught me to play whist and how to work out the form of race horses! And told me ghost stories!

Her house had long grass and a redundant antique lawnmower. A motorbike with a side car leaned against the wall... there were apple trees and a skullery with odd bits of carvings from my Dad's time at sea. There were pink skilk, pleated lampshades and a coal fire.

My bedroom had been my Dads and it had his artwork on the walls. I loved it all so much. xxx

Tea from the Teas-maid
Sheets and many blankets and being tucked in very tightly
The orange glow of the street lamp outside the house
My Grans Madeira cake
The smell of my Grandad's pipe tobacco

Another one who remembers learning to play crib thanks to her Grandparents here! :)

The smell of lavender bags - everywhere.
The curtains with a bow pattern on, that when the wind blew looked like butterflies fluttering.
Filling the little glass up with water so the nodding ducks could dunk in it.
Margerine and not butter (yum) for me Blue Riband was a treat
The paintings on the wall - still remember them in detail.
The cuckoo clock cuckooing (I have my own now) and the race and argument with my Dsis to pull the chain.
Their dentures by the side of the beds without the face bit
The taste of the water which was fed by a natural spring.
The smell of coal tar soap in the bathroom.
The fact I felt like the princess and the pea cause the bed I slept in had three mattresses on it
Sitting around and singing with them when one played on the piano and the other played the organ.

I could go on and on and on ... I too, miss them so much and they both passed away in the 80's. We holidayed in the area this Summer ((first holiday in 10 years) and although the house and area have changed it was all just too familiar and lovely