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.

Cold, damp, spiders.....

It was huge, but my parents couldn't afford to look after it properly. My bedroom was so damp that the ceiling eventually collapsed over my bed!

Some of our bedrooms had washbasins. There was a mysterious overgrown alleyway which ran between the rows of houses - someone on another thread informed me that it was probably from where "night soil" was collected.

(My parents told me that a nearby house they looked at had electricity meters in every room, and as a young adult I lived in a house like that, which had twelve bedsits.)

House built in 1780, and there wasn't a straight line in it. No level floors - the night my parents moved in (before I was born) they went to sleep in their bed and woke up on the other side of the room. The floor had a slope and the bed had casters. We never had any furniture with casters after that.
Knowing every single creaky floorboard or stair tread and doing a kind of acrobatic dance to get up two floors to my bedroom without anyone hearing me, when coming in a LOT later than I should have!
Ice on the inside of the windows in winter.
The only heating being a coal fired aga in the kitchen and a coal fire in the living room. The rest of the house was baltic.
Bed recesses and lots of nooks and crannies.
An old metal tub with a wooden scrubbing board and a mangle attached to it. We played with the mangle for hours till my brother crushed my sister's fingers and Dad got rid of it.
We also had a ghost, according to Mum and our dog.

A 1930s detached 5 bedroom house, with stained glass windows, dark oak interior wood everywhere (they gave in and painted it light grey in later years), bakelite mottled hexagonal door knobs, each door had a lock and key, picture rails, black and white tiling in the bathroom, Art Deco shaped fireplace in every room (only lit upstairs if someone was at death's door), washbasins in every bedroom, a tiled larder and originally, a mottled metal cooking range, which was upgraded in my childhood to a bog standard gas cooker. Attics we weren't allowed in, and surprisingly, no cellars. Oh and a wider than usual front door, which was much older than 1930s and had clearly been salvaged from somewhere. It was about 2 inches thick, on huge hinges, a tiny wobbly glass window and a huge cast iron lion's head knocked you could hear all over the house (we never did get a doorbell)

Knocker, that is.

My house was built in 1893. Similar to most of the housing stock around here apart from new builds and I grew up in the same sort of house so just seems like a normal house to me. I have a vague memory of single glazed sash windows but they were double glazed when I was young in the 80s and we always had central heating.

We do have issues fitting eg bookcases or hanging pictures as none of the walls are straigt.

Absolutely freezing
Sash windows which had frayed rope and trapped your fingers.
A really long wide hallway that we roller skated and rode our scooters on when it rained. Would be considered a waste of space now.
A window in the living room floor that enabled you to see into the cellar.
Extremely dangerous stairs very steep, narrow and curved.
A small loft room with only a tiny skylight very high up that didn't open yet we used it as a bedroom.
Over 250 years old.

@wanderings, I think they were probably electric, house wasn’t quite old enough for mechanical, but it was def. pre WW2, when lots of quite ordinary families still had a maid (or skivvy.)

I grew up in an early Edwardian terrace, smaller than the op's. It had two bedrooms. Coal fires (or 'fire'), no heating upstairs except for the bathroom. Other than the size, it was similar to that of the opening posters.

Very cold!

Quite nice gardens back and front.

Freezing Victorian six bed
Being put in large old fashioned pram on terrace with a packet of biscuits for the afternoon
No central heating
Set of servants bells
Spooky cellars
Coal hole
A worn step through from kitchen to scullery
Sheila maid with clothes drying on it
Ice on the inside of our marble bathroom walls
My brother turning blue as a baby from cold
Me screaming with cold in the bath
Lovely French windows on to terrace
Fantastic nursery/play room on top floor
Playing "show jumping" in the garden

No central heating. We used a smaller room in the winter as a sitting room.
Playing hide and seek
Using the maids bell to let your mum know you’d been sick when you were ill in bed.

Both DH and I grew up in older houses. His memories are of low ceilings, small dark rooms, sloping walls and floors and of finding a priest hole when he was a teenager.

My house was a mish-mash put together over the centuries-the oldest part dating from the 1600s the newest part being Victorian. The old part was low ceilings, flag stone floors, small windows set in incredibly thick walls. The newer part was high ceilings, (I remember my dad getting out the ladder to change light bulbs/put up Christmas decorations) Huge rooms with oak panelling and gorgeous fire places. Massive sweeping staircases and a smaller staircase at the back of the house. It was a wonderful house to grow up in!

The house came with a lot of very antiquated furniture-my parent found a bag of gold sovereigns stuffed in an ancient sofa. They gave them back to the family who sold them the house!!

I googled it recently and found out it had been turned into holiday flats. Completely unrecognisable now.

Ooh also round pin plugs needing adaptors!

Oh I forgot the outside lav! Remember my father putting on a long rubber mac and drinking a small whiskey before going to tackle a dead rat that had frozen in the bowl [eugh]

Also remember a traditionally dressed Romany lady coming to the back door selling posies.

And a beret-wearing bloke on a bicycle selling onions.

I'll play.

1930s semi, council property.

A cupboard in the living room for storing food.

The kitchen consisted of a room with a sink and a place to hook up a gas cooker.

Cold water tank in the bedroom, rather than the roofspace. Giant Immersion heater in the huge 'airing cupboard' that wasn't allowed to be touched, the cupboard was stuffed with paper and old blankets to 'keep the heat in'.

No heating other than a single gas fire downstairs. The fireplaces in two of the bedrooms had been stuffed with newspaper to (unsuccessfully) keep birds out.

Single glazing.

So much condensation. Which was great come winter when it froze on the glass, as it made the rooms feel warm.

No insulation. (or carpets that covered more than a small rectangle over dessicated lino, with cut outs around the doors so they could open).

It finally got central heating and double glazing in the 1990s.

The ceiling fell in about five years ago. They patched it up and went - just bare particle board between the bedroom and the loft, no insulation added.

I just remember being cold, with my fingers burning all the time in winter. And not wanting to get out of bed ever because it was so cold, sneaking out of bed to put socks, jumpers and anything else I could find on, as my nylon quilt wasn't much good in the middle of winter.

My current house was built about 1850 as a farmworker's cottage, so two up two down (now has an extension for bathroom and kitchen). It's been modernised, sadly. I've got a lead on someone who lived here in 1970, before the modernisation, and I'm hoping to meet with her to find out what the houses were like back then!

The history of houses fascinates me, and I'm slightly worried by the modern trend of ripping out all the period features to give smooth walls and nicely fitting doors and windows.

Our house used to be a monastery.. Monks buried under the dining room floor.. I was always in fear of seeing a ghostly monk as a child!

@Allnamesaregone My grandmother's house contained an assortment of sockets: two-pin, round three-pin. There were about three modern rectangular sockets in the entire house. She wouldn't hear of having the house rewired; she promptly fitted old plugs on new devices, cutting the earth wire if necessary.

Edwardian semi with small to medium garden containing 2 apple trees, a damson tree, a plum tree, a gooseberry bush, a blackcurrant bush and 2 gorgeous scented climbing roses growing the length of the fence, one pink the other cream.

A larder with a large stone shelf and a mesh meat safe [no fridge until the 70's]. A wash copper and a mangle in the kitchen ready for wash day. Crumpets were toasted on a long fork over the coal fire in the living room.

I had tin baths in front of the coal fire in the winter, but in the summer had baths in the upstairs bathroom if the temperamental geyser worked. Hair was always dried in front of the fire.

It was cold, but i can't remember it being that bad apart from when using the outside loo [with izal toilet paper!] in the day time/evenings, we only used the WC in the upstairs bathroom at night time . I loved that house and was very sad to leave it.

House was built 1880. Dad bought the basement flat, aka servants quarters, and modernised it in about 1950. There was a well under the flagstones in our coal House (room), which had been the laundry. Our bell was one of those mechanical ones.
There was one fireplace in the whole house, and single glazed sash windows which froze inside in the winter.

We lived in an old farmhouse.

Meat hooks hanging from the ceiling in the kitchen. The old back corridor was worn bricks. My bedroom was the old 'servants quarters' and had a tiny sash window under the eaves but its own wooden staircase up from the back kitchen, which I loved.

Lots of very narrow cupboards in every room that went back for a long way and were great for hide and seek. Fireplaces upstairs and down - and no central heating!

I loved it - and the farm buildings were fantastic to play in. A cobbled old crew yard and lots of brick stables with pantiled roofs and gutters in the floors (for wee and poo). We had two pigs and there was a hand turned chopping thing on their sty - you put in a turnip and turned the handle to feed them. The milk lorry collected the churns from the top of the lane every morning. We had cart horses that pulled the carts with hay on them (I realise I sound ancient, here!) I actually grew up in the 60s and early 70s rather than the 1920s - but my great-uncles ran the smallholding and hadn't changed with the times.