What are your childhood memories of your grandparents' house?

The (pleasant) nostalgic smell in the pantry.

The (much used) sewing box, containing button box - my favourite. Sewing basic clothes for my little dolls with my grandmother.

Blankets in the spare (my) bedroom, dozens of them, no duvets, but was lovely and warm.

Collecting blackberries and lavender, I always associate the scent of the latter with their house now.

We had a version of 'gran's press' as mentioned by Singingsands, in a (locked) wooden cupboard. Gifts would be produced from here. Notable ones included a treasury of fairy tales and a toy sweet shop with real sweets.

The woodland walks with my grandfather. He would always reminisce about those when I was grown up.

Has reminded me how much I do actually miss them, though they died a long time ago.

I still feel raw about losing my Grandad a year ago and both my Grans have Alzheimers :(

My Grandma G, always had a big bag of sweets for us when we arrived, and another when we left (saw her 5 times a year max.) A freezer full of ice creams and a well stocked cake box. She would buy us videos, like a really low rate Thumbelina and had three dogs and worked three jobs until she was 75.

Grandma, was quiet, good for a game of scrabble and made the best toast ever!
She was quite reserved, but really enjoyed our company having four girls herself. The big cuddles we got off her and Grandad on arrival and leaving were wonderful.

Grandad, very tall, fantastic sense of style, smelt heavenly. Would make us laugh by wiggling his ears at us, making funny noises at us whilst tickling with his foot on the way past. etc Would tape films for us off the TV, as did Grandma.

My Grandparents are wonderful, and watching them decline and realising they are getting old has been the biggest shock to me as I grew up. I didn't see them all the time and they were all so consistent, that when they started to change it was a real move away from my childhood.

This is about the whole experience of being back in my beloved Gateshead, as well as the house - hope that's all right. There's a lot of it as memories kept popping up as I typed:

Arriving (at last, after 300-odd mile journey) in Nanny and Granddad's street - still cobbled. The tang of coal smoke in the air (still takes me back, that one). Blue and red glass in the front door, which when looked through made the world seem strange and new.

Lying in bed in my tiny slip of a room and hearing the trains rattling past - the London-Edinburgh line ran past the bottom of the street. After a night or two, no longer being woken up by them. Nanny's wise words and Granddad's wisecracks. The Geordie budgie, calling out "Whar's that Smutty? Whar's the cat? Puss-puss-puss!". Smutty the cat opening the back door by banging on the latch with his front paws.

Trips to Shields fish quay with Granddad to buy job lots of fish which he then sold to the neighbours. It seemed to me then that Granddad knew everybody on Tyneside as he was greeted from all sides everywhere we went. Rolling up some tabs for him in his little rolling machine. Or watching him roll a tab one-handed (he had lost his left arm in a workplace accident years before). Listening to Nanny singing "Felton Lonnin" and "The Dashing White Sergeant". She had a voice like a silver bell.

Swimming at Leam Lane baths, and trips to Saltwell Park. Lovely poppy seed bread from the local Jewish bakers. Seeing the Jewish people going to the schul on Saturday, smart in their best clothes. Buses with "Shop at Binns" emblazoned on their fronts.

The most delectable ice cream ever, sold by a man who had a pony and cart and visited once a week, announcing his arrival with a blast of a whistle. I have been looking for ice cream like that ever since.

She always wore house coats, when ever I think of her I remember her wearing a royal blue one.

Always being fed/offered food and snacks, you were not allowed to not eat at her house and she made the best sauce's for dinner.

She always had spiders in her house (the house backed onto a forest).

She had a toy boot which opened up into a house type thing that we always played with.

She had a pair of my late granddads glasses that she used to let me wear when we played schools or whatever because they 'suited' me.

She used to take alot of tablets and vitamins so I used to count them out for her in the morning when I stayed over (doesn't sound like the best thing to do but it was fun! lol) and she used to give the cat cod liver oil capsules.

These are just a few. Unfortunately she now has alzheimers (sp?) and is in a care home but I am very pleased that I have so many very happy memories of her from when she was well.

Another one who played Cribbage.

Grandad smoking roll-ups. Sadly they got him in the end.

Izal loo paper too.

Our tree house in the garden.
Grandad's chamber pot under the bed - even after they had an inside bathroom.

Cats everywhere.
Roasting chestnuts and marshmallows on the open fire.

Dad's side

• sugar sandwiches on cheap white bread with margarine (to make the sugar stick, of course)
• eating our tea on the stairs
• Wogan on the black and white TV (and wondering why they didn't just get a colour one like we had), also snooker in black and white.
• dogs and cigarette smoke
• making gingerbread from the Be-ro cookbook
• ivory ornaments (especially elephants) and an ivory bracelet we would roll along the floor

Mum's side

• teapots, the kind you collect
• plastic floor mats in the hallway
• plastic concertina doors in the kitchen and bathroom
• the worlds weirdest packed lunches (I lived with them for a few months and the first time they made my packed lunch for school I was given four salmon sandwiches, six bags of cheap crisps, five penguin biscuits, a d a two litre bottle of coke. I had to redo it discretely so as not to hurt their feelings)
• my Nana's suntan and jewellery and nice clothes and dyed hair
• Grandad and his ship's bread
• tinned stewing steak! While I was at Nana's my parents were at Grandad's, he bought food for our dog - umpteen tins of stewing steak in gravy :o

I suddenly really miss them :(

Can I go again? This has opened memory floodgates!

Three little glass kittens in a tiny china pot.
Watching Dads Army.
Playing cards (spectacularly memorable game when Grandma flicked her false teeth across the room by accident)
Going for walks and each of us using a walking stick.
Soup that tasted of nothing but ground pepper.
Playing King of the Castle in bed with them before we all got up for breakfast (which was all ready and set up the nigt before)
Grandma confusing the dogs name with mine, and telling friends I hadn't wet the bed at all whilst staying for a week.

My Grandma was the best Truly the best

The teasmade! I never quite grasped what it was as a child but I wish I knew where it had ended up, because I'd love to have it now. Tea! In bed! Without having to get up!
Strange watery skimmed milk.
The orange concertina sliding door between the kitchen and the downstairs loo.
Chocolate my nanna had hidden from herself all over the house. She had a particularly good stash in a hatbox at the top of her wardrobe and would send me up to dig it out for her.
Pickled onions - sitting with a fork each and eating an entire jar between us one evening.
Rides on her Stairlift :o

I miss mine too much to even start.

Pressed send to fast

at paternal grandparents house

Bow and arrow (grandad taught me)
Raw peas in brown paper bags
the coin she would press in my hand
the clock

at step grandparents house

matchboxes to build with (we had 2 huge bags)
the huge plate rack with sweets at the bottom
longhaired jack russels
the smell of wool
knitting

and yes agree with the poster all the best memories come from my grandparents houses I was blessed to have 3 sets

The doorbell.

The swirly carpet pattern, we used to pick a coloured "swirl" and then you were only allowed to step on that colour!

The extremely grumpy and scary old cat, who would think nothing of swiping a sharpened claw down your arm as you passed him on the stairs.

How the spare room had a "hard bed" and a "soft bed" and we'd always fight to sleep in the "soft bed"!

The loo roll holder in the bathroom that was 3 foot high - little cupboard for loo roll storage, little shelf for grandad's newspaper, little dispensing section with serrated edge for ripping the loo roll, and an ashtray on the top!

The old out-of-tune piano.

Gran's "press" - the mysterious cupboard we used to try to sneak into to find treasures!

All the old family photos on the dresser. Australian relatives we'd never meet but seemed to know so intimately.

And the smell of it, that familiar smell.

Ahhh...memories!

Half-crown for birthdays. I thing that is 12.5p

Nanny's button box.
The tin of sweets in the larder.
Butcher's steels and knives, hams hanging in the larder (Grandad was a butcher).
Grandad bringing the take from the shop home and sitting with him counting old pound notes and marvelling at a £50.
The HUGE, 6 inch thick ledgers in which he wrote his accounts.
Antique furniture and treasures, the textured glass jug which inspired my own antique glass collection many years later.
Nanny's apple pie.
Blackie the Labrador.
Making a kite from a paper bag and flying it from the balcony.
The click click of Nanny's knitting needles.
Reading the Observer with Grandad on a Saturday afternoon.
The clunk and whoosh of the lift to their flat as it was operated late at night in the still darkness.

Oh how I miss my Nanny and Grandad.

warm gooseberries (from the sun)
coffee and smoke (she smoked 60 a day)
heavy heavy duvets
canasta
cross words
Sitting on the ironboard with 2 cousins as we had run out of chairs so ironboard over 2 chairs made for 3 seats
Sleeping in 2 chairs pushed together
4711

and oh love love love..

miss her still.. (18 years in Jan since she passed)

wonderful thread

I miss mine too. The strength of their unconditional love was formidable and unquestioning.

The smell of my grandmas sherry
The piles of newspaper clippings my grandad stashed under his chair
The quality street tins full of Lego and buttons
Polishing my grandmas silver tea service every weekend when I stayed there
Freezing our tits off because my grandma refused to have the heating on
20p every weekend and £2.50 for my birthday

I really miss them

My gran's big box of buttons.

Playing shoe shops with my DSis and my nan's shoes. Not her best ones though. :o

Watching Tom and Jerry with my grandad.

My grandad playing the organ.

Our yearly trip to Blackpool. Not strictly a memory from their house but one I always think of.

Grandad's homemade mushroom soup and lovely porridge on cold days.

My best childhood memories all come from my grandparents house.

The smell of Warburtons bread - Nana's flat

The smell of lamb cooking and of huge jars of pickling vinegar - Other Nana's flat. She also had a blow up doll in the corner of her bedroom, which her brother used as part of his comedy sketch (in a non sexual way).

Oooooh yes totally relate to having very vivid memories of grandparents' houses - for some reason much more vivid than memories of my own family home.

In my case: at my Italian grandparents' house:

walking round and round between kitchen and living room via an outside balcony (they were on the 5th floor) and smelling the smell of freshly made bread coming from the bakery in the courtyard below

the heat on my legs when we went out

the mothball smell from my grandmother's wardrobe

the smell of my Dad's deodorant as he got ready in the morning

the endless naps my parents would have in the afternoons while my sister and I annoyed our grandparents who they themselves eventually dozed off as well!

delicious vegetables

mozzarella

and loads more....

At my English grandparents' house:

again the smell of the house

thick wall to wall carpet

my sister and I sleeping under matching duvets

the light/windmill that played a tune that my sister and I listened to again and again

listening to Radio 4 news being read by the newsreader with the really deep voice on our way there

apple and blackberry pie - also steak and kidney pie (am now a vegetarian so that is actually a bit of a yuk memory!)

and on and on and on!!!!