Growing up in an older house: your memories?

[wanderings]

If you grew up in an older house (e.g. big rooms, high ceilings, fireplaces, sash windows), what do you remember about yours that would astound those who grew up in a modern house?

Mine was an Edwardian terrace, and some things about it were:

• Coal hatch leading into the cellar.
• Long corridors.
• Mosaic floor in hallway.
• Two huge roof spaces.
• Fireplaces in most rooms, although none were operational.
• Wiring which was highly unsafe, and eventually it was redone.

It was a lovely place for playing hide and seek! The previous owners had tried to modernise it with handrails, and covering up spindles on staircases; my parents quickly reversed these, and restored some features such as brass doorknobs.

Our house wasn’t huge, a fairly standard suburban 4 bed probably built in the early 1930s, but when we moved in there were still bell pulls for summoning servants* in most of the rooms, and in the kitchen an indicator saying Drawing room, Bedroom 1, etc.
*most likely just one ‘maid of all work’.

Our folks soon got rid of them - probably driven mad by us kids playing with them, but they’d have gone during redecoration anyway - the decor was horrendous - all brown paint and ‘porridge’ wallpapers, as my DM put it.

@GETTINGLIKEMYMOTHER Were they mechanical bells? My grandmother's house had bells, with a panel showing which room the bell was rung from, but they were electric.

Huge six bedroom town house with servants quarters attached, it was converted in to five two bedroom flats when my family sold it. It was very early Victorian.

Absolutely freezing!
Ice on the inside of the windows
Meat hooks in the huge fireplace where the range had been
Flagstone kitchen floor
Original Lino flooring in one bedroom
A huge ornate marble fireplace, that we ran along as small dc, was probably drawing room in years past.
One window was bricked in due to window tax of years past
Part of the railings were gone due to the scrap metal drive in WW2.
Stained glass internal door
Gas mantles in the hallway, not working
Ornate plasterwork ceiling

The developers ripped out all original features.

A very unhappy household but we did live in an incredibly beautiful house though it was a bit shabby.

I was facinated by our cellar. The worn brick steps. A little alcove. The internal window. The broken, rusty iron hinges protouding from the wall where there would once have been a door.
Sadly the rest of the restoration in the early 80 was not sympathetic and other than the oak beams and sash windows, much was stripped out. There is still some panelling around one window and hinge marks from shutters. What it was like when it was derilict prior to restoration and what would have been saved today, I don't know.

It was great fodder for my imagination though.

Slipping over and banging head on flagstone. Sliding down 3 flights of bannisters. Flannels freezing to the side of the bath. Inventing games that involved dressing up in our parents' duffel coats cause it was soooooo cold. Drying hair in front of open fire on Sunday nights.

@GETTINGLIKEMYMOTHER

Our house wasn’t huge, a fairly standard suburban 4 bed probably built in the early 1930s, but when we moved in there were still bell pulls for summoning servants* in most of the rooms, and in the kitchen an indicator saying Drawing room, Bedroom 1, etc. *most likely just one ‘maid of all work’.

Our folks soon got rid of them - probably driven mad by us kids playing with them, but they’d have gone during redecoration anyway - the decor was horrendous - all brown paint and ‘porridge’ wallpapers, as my DM put it.

I lived in a pre-war house in a row built by a developer so they had similar features. Wood panelling and tiled floors Inglenook fireplace next door A few houses down, they still had servants bells.

Victorian cottage. No central heating until mid seventies. It had two fireplaces downstairs but upstairs was bloody freezing in winter. It still had the washing copper in our woodshed.

We lived for a while in a house built in the 1920s. Long hallway, and a big sweeping staircase that went round in a curve to the landing at the top. I was only little and it seemed enormous, like something out of a Hollywood movie. I loved that house and was so sad when we moved to a new build.

I remember sitting in the inglenook fireplace keeping warm on cold winter days. And very thick ice on the inside of my bedroom window. Plus of course leaping into an icy cold bed as soon as I was undressed.

Tudor house, low ceilings, no heating, one open fire. The loo was downstairs and was once outside but had a corridor built to link it to the back door, was so cold and awful to sit down! The smell of a traditional larder. Sloping floors upstairs, and small windows.

17th century Devon longhouse that hadn’t been updated since it was built (it felt like). Bouncy floorboards upstairs, terrifying wiring, ice on the inside, only heating was an open fire and two very moderne night storage heaters that made no difference to anything at all. Huge kitchen range fireplace hidden by a dresser as the chimney had fallen in and we couldn’t afford to fix it. Spiders. Lots and lots of spiders, and the pitter patter of tiny feet across the ceiling at night.

Late Victorian semi

Single glazed sash windows in the bedrooms - fucking freezing

A downstairs bathroom that had been shoddily built sometime in the 50s. Again also fucking freezing.

I grew up in a 16th century wood beamed house, it was wonderful- the tick of deathwatch beetle in spring, automatically ducking where the low beams were. We had a play house in the old Victorian wash house in The garden complete with copper and oven - great for little fires! Rats/mice in the walls too but absolutely lovely and learnt a lot about very old houses, dating from beam shape etc etc still dream about it now 15 years later!

Victorian cottage, so not the high ceiling etc.

• damp cellar
• lots of cupboards to hide in
• fragile bay window that we had to keep away from
• fireplaces in bedrooms

This is a nice thread. We live in a Victorian house and I wonder what my kids will remember when they're older!

Huge Victorian house in the 60s. No central heating and, during the 62 freeze, there was a layer of ice on the inside of the windows every morning. Sliding down bannisters. Creepy cellar that was always damp and often flooded. Very spooky attic roofspaces. Big fireplaces with huge fires that seemed to need constant attention. The coal man coming with sacks of coal on a donkey. The chimney sweep and watching for the brush appearing out of the top of the chimney.

Edwardian terrace house growing up.

Original stained glass in the inner door. Moulded cornices in the hallway ceiling. Fireplaces in every room. When I was young there was a wash copper in the kitchen and an outside toilet (although we also had an indoor bathroom, several houses in the street only had the outside toilet and a tin bath in the kitchen until the 70's).

No heating except for a two bar electric fire in the living room. Huge sash windows (my bedroom still had the wartime glass in). So always cold, curtains freezing to the inside of windows.

Also net curtains, but that was my mother's peculiarity, not the house!

My parents moved in in 1958 and couldn't afford to do much to the house through most of my growing up. We sold the place when my mum died a couple of years ago and it's now been completely ripped to pieces and 'modernised'.

Yes! Coal delivery down the coal hole into the cellar. We used to climb in and out of the coal holes. We once found a hedgehog that had fallen down and couldn't get out.
And yes, the spiders. So many spiders. And stairs. Lots of stairs.

Oh, yes, ice on the inside of the windows - didn’t have central heating until I was 14.

There were gas fires in all the bedrooms, in the hall, and even in the bathroom, but they were lit only very rarely, when it was absolutely bloody freezing.
The gas for the fires was turned on by such a simple tap, I was paranoid about younger brother and sister turning them on by mistake, and was always going into their rooms after bedtime to check.

I didn’t grow up in an old house, but I used to live in an 18th Century farmhouse.

The dining room was originally the pig curing room - under the floorboards the original floor was filled with salt and there were iron hooks arranged along the ceiling beams where the pig carcasses used to hang.

There were servants’ bells under the stairs too, and fireplaces in all the bedrooms.

I adored that house. It was beautiful.

I grew up in a really quirky house built in the 1830’s, the cellar (it had a window but was downstairs as the house was on a slope) was the old kitchen and still had stone flagstones, huge fireplace, old stone sinks, meat hooks hanging from the beams. The back cellar had a coal chute that had been blocked up. The sitting room had stone flagstones when you took the carpet up, and the front room that I guess would have been the parlour had the outline of old diamond tiles or something when we took the paper down to redecorate. My Mum sold it recently and got quite a decent amount for it, people like old stone terraces because they’re attractive! It was cold to live in though (I remember getting dressed in front of the sitting room fire in the winter) and Mum says it was expensive to heat, she’s far happier in her smaller modern house now she’s sold up!

The solid fuel boiler for hot water was in the breakfast room - only room in the house that was always warm - I still have memories of my poor DF going out in the snow on freezing early mornings to fetch the fuel for it.

In winter, after my mother had gone back to work, the first thing I had to do once home from school was to lay the sitting room fire. I’m still a whizz at making those zigzag things out of tightly rolled up newspaper.

I grew up in a beautiful five bedroom Victorian detached house. It had been neglected and turned into an HMO. My parents bought it and spent a fortune on doing it up - so all the windows were replaced with authentic-looking sash windows that had double glazing so we weren't cold, for example.

I do remember having the idea that everyone had a cellar
We also had gorgeous operational fireplaces and loved being able to come home on a cold day and sit round a fire together.

We lived in a 1912 terrace house when I was growing up. Mum and Dad still live there now.

Single glazed sash windows until Dad got redundancy when I was 18. Absolutely freezing.

Downstairs bathroom which wasn’t fun when combined with the freezing bedrooms.

Outside toilet and coal bunker.

Non-straight walls so wallpaper a nightmare.

None of the fancy/charming features like high ceilings, picture rails, servants bells. Can’t see the attraction myself!

If you grew up in an older house (e.g. big rooms, high ceilings, fireplaces, sash windows

Well, that's a rather revealing assumption for a start. Not all older houses have big rooms, high ceilings etc -- I grew up in a mid-Victorian cottage, which was a warren of tiny rooms all leading out of one another, no bathroom, an outdoor loo, and a meatsafe outside the back door.

My memories are of being overcrowded and how crappy it was going outdoors to pee in cold weather -- and the spiders.