In My Grandmother's House.

[LastGoldenDaysOfSummer]

My Welsh grandparents lived in a large terraced house on a steep hill. The houses were built around the turn of the century. There was a front parlour, a sitting room, a kitchen and a scullery downstairs and an outside toilet. Two huge bedrooms and a bathroom upstairs.

I was describing it to OH and a memory suddenly came back. There was a power cut over the Christmas period when I was very small and my grandfather lit the gas mantles that I hadn't know existed until then. I hadn't realised that houses were lit by gas until electricity became widely available.

They gave off a lovely glow and, at my request, we used them often, even after the power was restored.

My grandfather was the organist at the church and there was a baby grand piano that nearly filled the parlour. All his children learned to play the piano on that. And we used to sing carols around it at Christmas time.

When my grandfather retired he had the house rewired and the gas mantles taken away.

Any other memories of grandparents' homes.

The laundry.
It was a warm pantry really but the tub,mangle ,scrubbing board and spinner were like an engineering play room.
Best time mangled cousin Andrews hair and left him stuck in there.
Fucker had let my balloon go.

My grandmother had a sliding panel under her bath, like the side of the bath itself would slide to one side. She used to keep her soap, shampoo etc in there like a cupboard. I was a big Enid Blyton reader, and was convinced this secret panel was the door to a secret passage way, but my parents would never allow me to crawl in and find out!

The button tin, loved tipping it out and sorting, lining them up etc.
Not one of my 3 children and 9 grandchildren have ever shown the tiniest bit of interest in my button tin!

My Great Gran used to have those amazing 50's drinking glasses that were decorated on the sides with deer and the like. I remember playing in her yard and she'd give me juice in one of the high ball ones.

My Nan and I were very close. She was an exceptional woman and her house in the late 70's was the epitome of the style for the era. I most clearly remember the TV she had that was round and like an astronauts helmet. It was so so cool. I remember idly watching that TV on the morning Lennon was shot and knowing I should probably remember that moment but not really understanding why.

Smugglers Top Norlax? I even tried measuring the outside of my great Aunts farm with a yard stick trying to find hidden passages.

@Knittingnanny

The button tin, loved tipping it out and sorting, lining them up etc. Not one of my 3 children and 9 grandchildren have ever shown the tiniest bit of interest in my button tin!

Oh I remember this ! It was like a treasure trove !

Isn't it funny how some random items are so vivid in your mind? When I think of my gran's house, the first thing that comes to me is sponge fingers and a little metal table with fold out legs that got put in the lounge on a sunday when all the family popped in for tea.
She had a big tree at the end of her garden that we could run all the way round.
Her spare bed had a pink counterpane on it, that was embroidered. I can imagine I can still feel how rough it was!

Thanks for this thread @LastGoldenDaysOfSummer, it's nice to remember.

I'd never heard of gas mantels, that sounds lovely!

Oh gosh yes, the button tin!! Hours of fun

Oooooooooooooh. Button tins.

I only has sons and neither took an interest.

These are lovely memories.

My gran had a pantry and a scullery. There was also a large piece of furniture in the hall with a mirror, coat hooks, hat pegs etc. - I don’t even know the correct name for it but the mink (?) complete with beady glass eyes and claws which was worn with smart winter coats also lived there when not in use. She also had “The Room” which was the front parlour and only used on very rare occasions. When she died she was placed in her coffin and put in The Room so the family could pay their last respects. I loved my gran.

After church o. Christmas Day, we walked to my Nanas house. The air was filled with Christmas smells and she made her own sausage rolls which had marjoram in them. My grandpa decorated the tree one year and it was put away in the attic still decorated as my nana said it looked the best it ever had.
Unfortunately my grandpa died suddenly the following year and nana proudly carries the tree downstairs - just as he’d decorated it the year before. She never changed it until she passed away over 20 years later.
(Remembering this has opened the floodgates. Oh how I wish I could go back and sit with her again)

My grandparents' house had a box tree outside the front door so every time I spend time anywhere with a box hedge I'm reminded of it by the smell.

They had a room they called the scullery, which was basically just a connecting room between the kitchen and the garage but it had a big stone sink for washing clothes and was where the old mangle was kept.

It’s been 25 years since I was in my grandparents house but I would recognise the smell of it anywhere. The memory of it makes me feel really safe and loved. They were both fantastic people and I didn’t see as much of them as I should once I grew up. It’s something I’ll always feel incredibly guilty for.

Love this thread. I'm smiling at the bath panel secret passage too. My nan's didn't slide but it did push forward and I too was convinced of mysterious happenings.

Oh yes, and the Room! When I was in my teens my grandparents suddenly decided to start using the Room for every day rather than high days and holidays - still felt like a great treat.

I still have a button box that belonged to my Great Great Gran, she scratched her name into the lid. It still has all it's contents as well.
I've also still got my Nanas handbag, little sentimental things that mean the world.

There was a laundry room in 1 DGMs house here too. And an (electric) bell in 2 rooms (1 bedroom and the sitting room) that rang in that laundry room. (Officially for the "maid", but there was never a maid in the house, just a large family).

The other DGM had a chair with shortened legs in the bathroom, not put in for old age as it was already very old when I was tiny and DGM was only in her 50s then. And she had a loo upstairs but also another in a shed in the garden tacked onto the kitchen.

I used to also play with a visiting DGD in the Rectory down the hill (which was owned by a local farmer for a couple of generations at that stage) - it's probably a 5/6 bedroom house from the 1800s, but had a "good" sitting room (which we were never allowed in - it was strictly for Sunday afternoons and Christmas) as well as the everyday living room, proper farmhouse kitchen/diner nowadays (still old fashioned as that was put in in the 1950s) but the original stove was still there (completely filled with soot and non functional) in the original kitchen in the basement - there were 3 rooms that were ok to play in down there and a 4th which was pitch black and scared us.

Family farm in NI. My granny had an annexe type thing off the main farmhouse.

I remember her garage / lean too was always full of crates of glass brown and red lemonade bottles to be collected

Her ironing board and iron which was a thing you had to put in the fire to heat up (I'm only 30, she really could have moved to electric!)

The jug of raw milk that was out there to keep cold every day

The stack of peat and the smell of burning peat in the fire

The smell of farm - not in a bad way just very very different to London where I grew up!

I loved my maternal grandmother’s house. She had a pantry and a pot bellied stove in the kitchen. She’d make me an ice cream wafer in the summer - I don’t even know if you can get slabs of ice cream.

My paternal grandmother was a different kettle of fish - of Irish descent and very god fearing. She used to take us to Benediction or Confession if she was babysitting and her living rooom was a clutter of Catholic tat - crucifix, Palm Sunday crosses, papal blessings, pictures of the Virgin Mary, holy water font etc. I once counted nearly 40 items of religious stuff in that room. For a very holy woman she was a nasty piece of work.

The room I used to sleep in when we stayed with my grandparents had a curved roof, like a train carriage (of the time). There was no central heating - my grandma would heat the bed using an electric blanket plugged into the ceiling light . There was a scary 1960s clock in the shape of an eye. The kitchen was tiny - more like a pantry than a kitchen. There was a cupboard at the back which they'd stock with cans of fizzy drinks for our visit - a massive treat as my parents only bought fizzy drinks at Christmas from the milkman.

The smell of paraffin. Paternal granny had a coal fire in the living room and a paraffin heater in the bathroom. We were all terrified of the heater, as we'd had dire warnings about Not Touching the Heater (for obvious reasons!) but the smell will forever remind me of her house.

I remember lighting the gas mantle at Grandma's. I was about 11 years old when I was considered sensible enough to do so. When new the mantles looked little silky net bags, but after being lit for the 1st time they formed a fragile globe shape which you had to be careful not to touch with the match on subsequent lightings.
She also had a large mangle with wooden rollers in the back yard, which was covered by a tarpaulin when not in use.
The piece of hall furniture was called a hallstand.

My paternal grandparents didn't have a bathroom - there was a full sized plumbed in bathtub in one corner of the kitchen! The toilet was a door off the kitchen.

They had a "cinema" in the front room which was a curtained off corner by the chimney breast and I'm sure it had one of those boards with push in letters.

My grandmother used to snore like a chimney, and I had to sleep on a zbed on her bedroom floor - god it was awful but then the teasmade would go off, still in the dark, then we'd get up and walk through the empty dark streets to the grocer's shop she owned. Deliveries would come - hot bread from a van, fruit and veg from the market collected by my uncle; we'd bring it all in. We'd go through the plastic curtains into the back and sit on boxes and eat the damaged and out of date food. The smell of slightly rotting veg takes me right back.

These are lovely memories and have brought back more for me.

My other grandmother had a stove or range that she used to "black lead" every week.