What are your childhood memories of your grandparents' house?

From my dad's dad:
Tick tock of the grandfather clock - it's sitting silently on our landing now.
Freshly sliced bacon from the corner shop.
The manual lawnmower - no motor or anything, you just pushed it (hard!) over the grass.
The very uncomfortable green patterned chairs.

From my mum's dad:
The glass paperweights with coloured glass
The milky tea
The Irish music tapes
The catholic pictures/stuff everywhere
The smell of inner London council estate - everyone's dinner cooking at once!

Oranges, Definitely go if possible. You will never regret it.

[hugs] Oranges. Going to the funeral is so the right thing xx

My wonderful Dad died when ds was just 7 It breaks my heart to think he will hardly remember him.......

I decided, after reading this thread, to book time off work, jump on a plane and go to his funeral. I have to see him once more, and then that's it. He becomes a memory as precious as all those on this thread. Thank you all. x

I'm now bawling utterly. So sad to read your post oranges.

My wonderful, wonderful Granda. The biggest man I've ever known even though he was only about 5ft 6.

Putting his slippers on the wrong feet to wear them out evenly, boiled eggs in the teapot, sleeping under a million sheets and then the arrival of the "continental quilt" , vegetable soup, pocketfuls of coal.

Dead 20 years but my ds sometimes reminds me of him so much.

Properly crying now.

{hugs} Oranges

In my grandparents' house I remember the outside loo, the scullery, the mangle, the Art Deco ornaments, the smell of mothballs, the cold, the cat, the dingey furnishings, the green chenille fringed tablecloth.
My great grandparents used to boil their kettle on a trivet over an open fire and used an old flatiron that you had to heat up in the fire. They had a front room that they called 'the parlour' and we children were not allowed to venture within its hallowed walls, as it was only used on special occasions; surprising because the house was quite small. When my great grandmother died, in the early '70s, her house was sold for £6,000. I found it on Rightmove for sale a couple of years ago ... for £580,000.

Max Factor Creme Puff face powder, and the "front room" which was only used for "best". I NEVER saw it used!! Hovis bread, cut really thin (by hand) and tinned mandarin segments with evaporated milk for tea. The black and white telly. Her addiction to Crossroads. The goat in the garden. The smell of coal fires (and all the other rooms perishingly cold). Sitting on her knee with her teaching me to knit. One in a million, my nana was....

Grandma and Nana wearing pinnys
Headscarves
Baking
Coal fires
Sweets
Yellow fish
watching doctor who
great grandma used to watch wrestling
carbolic soap
Jumping on the beds
1970s swirly wallpaper and lots of orange walls and carpets
all gone now, died over 25 years ago, Nana had altzheimers

Paternal grandparents- skips and chocolate biscuits. Battenburg. Too many people squashed into a room. Grandad always sat in his chair. Not understnading a word he said due to broad zummerzet accent. Take a break magazine. The back room with its organ. Photos everywhere. Having to kiss everyone hello and goodbye (was not fond of this). Chickens in the garden. Nanny chasing a balloon across the field when it blew away.

Maternal grandparents - the smell of coffee and cooking, gala pie, bovril sandwiches, mincing left over meat to make shepherds/cottage pie. always being slightly cold due to windows and doors being open year round, the tea tray, the hokey for sweeping up crumbs after tea, the sausage dog, beds with sheets and blankets, cabbage patterned curtains in my parents' room, very bubbley baths. Gadgets everywhere, the old amstrad computer...

paternal gran - playing in the close in her tenment where she raised 9 kids in a two bed (a lot of it alone as she was a widow). Friendly neighbours. Functioning outside loo. Loo inside with the high cistern and chain. Huge knickers hung out on the washing line in the communial gardens (no shame!). All the furniture/carpets were dark colours. Sash windows. Gran running about playing with us and having lots of fun.

material grandparents - very formal, better off grandparents (relatively speaking). Lots of cake, children should be seen and not heard. Alpine man delivering lots of bottles of ginger in vivid colours that made you hyper (and you still had to sit still!). Very fat cat. Sandwiches in condensed milk???????

Great thread.

My nan and grandad live on the isle of white.
I remember the excitement waiting to go on the ferry, then the smell of the sea when we arrived.
we always had cheese and piccalilli crusty rolls.
Waking up in the morning to the sound of the cockerel.
Watching countdown.
Feeding the horses that lived in the field at the back of their garden apples.
God there are so many we used to stay with them for a couple of weeks in the 6 weeks holiday.
A funny memory I have is that my brother sister and I used to lay in bed at night and try and plan how we could escape the island and go home to our parents coz we missed them .

I love this thread, it is so evocative. It is my favourite thread of all time.
I would love to see it made into a book with old photos.

Is it strange to enjoy the memories of others so much?

Here are mine;

Ancient fairy lights and paper Christmas decorations in beautiful pastel colours. none of that matchy matchy stuff you get nowadays.

Tinned fruit with evaporated milk.

Kitchen with faint smell of gas.

Slippery green satin eiderdowns.

Treasures from Woolworths before the war. Nana had a pink flowery chintz teaset that I coveted and now I have. I am sure she influenced my future taste.

Val

So many wonderful memories.

I hope my grandkids will think of me with as much affection as I do my Grandparents

Playing with Grandad's bus drivers hat.
Nannie ALWAYS having toffees lurking in the bottom of her handbag.
Her pretending to phone the police if we were naughty when she was looking after us.
Him making her laugh and them still being in love after 60 years of marriage, getting through WW2, 8 kids, death of one child and never any money. Inspirational (and make me ashamed of things I whine about sometimes ).

oranges. Your post is lovely. It's hard even when they've had a "good innings".

Too many memories of my grandma's house. The loch, the burn, the hills, red squirrels on the birdfeeder in the early morning.

Proper black dark - if you woke in the middle of the night you couldn't see your hand infront of your face (I'm a city girl so this was always a bit scary), but also millions of stars on a clear night. Peaty water in the bath, the smell of her soap.

Playing with her jewellry box on wet days, and a million adventures outside. It was a tiny, tiny house but outside was huge and we had the run of it from a very early age - single track road and miles from anywhere.

I still have dreams about my paternal gran's house. It was a big Victorian villa and I dream about secret corridors and rooms that I didn't know existed. Shelling peas, making perfume out of rose petals, climbing the big tree to see my dad's initials which he'd carved when he was 10, a set of old encyclopedias, the hornby trainset, the Rayburn and the two pulleys that my brother & I would dream of climbing on. The press and larder the scullery - names for things that we didn't have at home. My gran's cooking - she was an amazing cook.

It's the smells though. I can conjour up the smells from both places - amazingly evocative. I had such happy times in both places.

Oranges, my thoughts are with you. I wish you much strength in the coming days and in the future. I hope you can gain some comfort from your memories of him and your times with him x

I'm so sorry to hear about your granddad, Oranges, he was obviously a special person and very dear to you.

Your feelings must be raw at the moment; I hope you have the support of family around you. As this thread shows, grandparents form such a significant part of our lives - when they have gone, those memories stay with us for ever.

All my grandparents have been dead for may years now, but I still remember sight, sounds amd smells that are as vivid now as when they were alive.

My thoughts are with you too x

I never had a grandparent until we moved back to Italy when I was 6.5yo.

When we moved there we lived about half an hour's walk from my grandparents house and I spent so much time there I can remember, even now, the smallest details like the smell of particular cupboards; the sounds different doors made; the routines, and jobs we all had to do (grandchildren) like mopping the floor after lunch.

I can remember the lining paper she had on shelves; the first sounds of the cockerels; the exact way you had to turn the tap on outside to get it working.

The smell of pomodori being processed for the harvest. Lying out in the corn that had been left to dry out and getting a smack (for my grandfather benefit) but a big kiss and some icecream when he wan't looking

I could walk back there tomorrow and it would all be different as she has passed on, and I wish, from the bottom of my heart, I hadn't been so unbelievably stupid as to not go back (for lots of reason, none of which are bloody valid).

I'm sure lots of my childhood would have changed anyway, even if I had gone back, but maybe they would have been gradual changes. You know., The tap night have been fixed. The paper in the bottom of the cupboards would have been different...

But I know that I can lie down in bed tonight, and I feel so lucky that I can walk my way through that house, the out buildings and the farm and recall all of it. Sight, smell, touch. It's all still there. And I am so grateful as it was the most beautiful, happiest time in my life.

And it was all down to my utterly beautiful, ridiculously strong (in many ways) Nonna.

thank you. I want to talk to someone. I had thought about starting a thread but this one is just perfect. He so believed in me and I loved him so much.