Has anyone lived in a bedsit back in the day?

[Samcro]

Was thinking back to when i was in my early 20s back in the 80s, i lived in a bedsit. It was ok, i was lucky enough to have one that was meant for 2 people, so was not too small.
The toilet was communal, and you hd to leave your room and fo down stairs to a sort of cellar.
Shower was separate and not near toilet.
Bath was on another floor.
Back then we didn't have mobiles, so just a shared phone. On a table in the hall.
It took about half my wages.
Often wonder if anyone else lived in this way back then?.

Yes, Hull 1989 to 1990.

I started on the ground floor in one room with partitions which separated the bed bit from the kitchen area. Later on I moved to the first floor where I had the joy of a separate kitchen. I loved having my own space though it was absolutely freezing in winter.

Yes for a few months as a student in the 70s, it was a combined bedroom/ living room with a partitioned off kitchen area in a corner. Communal bathroom. Decent sized room but I was sharing it with another girl, also a student. It was actually ok, above a shop with one other bedsit across the hall, also occupied by two girls. We all got on and it was quite cosy and fun.

I had a sort of bed sit in Glasgow in the 90s, it could almost have just been a normal shared flat if everyone wanted it to but everyone liked to keep themselves to themselves. There was a shared kitchen and a bathroom on each floor. The communal phone was right outside my door which was a right PITA though. My boyfriend at the time had a more traditional bed sit with a sink, two-ring hob and this sort of cool box thing that wasn't quite a fridge. Still had a shared bathroom though.

I did it was in an old Victorian house
. It had 4 rooms per floor. Shared bathroom per floor.

I had a few parties their out on the corridor.

I did too

I shared a bedsit with a friend years ago when we were both in our first jobs. We had a shared bedroom/sitting room, a small kitchen and a shower/loo. It was good fun, and the shared bedroom was quite a good way of putting off over-eager boyfriends. Because we were so poverty-stricken we lived off things like vegimeat curries and eggs cooked every way possible, but I'm quite nostalgic about the sheer freedom of not having a mortgage to worry about, let alone anything else really by way of responsibility.

Yes. In Leeds mid 80s. A terraced house in a run down are divided into 6 bedsits with a communal bathroom. They were self contained, apart from the bathroom, and ran on 50p metres. One bar electric fire and a tiny oven. They were pretty tough times as always flat broke but the local chippy would give the left overs if you went last thing before closing time. Hard but also happy times with the various odd bods that moved in and out over the year I was there

£4 a week. Crouch End, North London. 1970. Tiny room with a Baby Belling and a sink.
Then moved to Stamford Hill with my boyfriend ( now DH) and we had a room with a kitchen area then another room ( not connected ,across the landing and up some stairs also with a Yale lock ) for a bedroom.
Shared bathroom and toilet that had borrowed light from our bedroom so when any one used it at night our bedroom lit up !
I think that one was £6 a week.
After that we had a proper flat in Winchmore Hill we were so excited It was £8 a week ! We left there in 1975 when we got married and bought a house it was £11000.

God, loads of them.
Hated those push in lights which inevitably turned off before you'd got back to your room.
In one the room was the size of a toilet and I had a full size fridge next to the bed which hummed all night.
Another had a shared shower down the hall which you had a meter, it took 50p's and the meter was outside the shower...insanity!!

Some of these makes DHs and Is first flat together seems luxurious. Our kitchen was so small you couldn’t open the oven fully without it banging off the opposite wall, the fridge was in the hall and the washing machine plunged into the bathroom sink. The bedroom and living room were good sizes though (Glasgow tenement) although the walls used to shake when a train went past and you could see the railway station from our bedroom. But we were young it was above a pub and an off licence what more could you want really?

I lived in one in France in the 80s. Bedroom, tiny shower room and toilet and tiny kitchen with a two ring stove. It was great, because it was part of a state boarding school and was rent free as I was working as an English assistant at the school.

Late 70s, shithole in shepherds Bush. That's why I went out boozing, clubbing and going to gigs every night, often straight from work. I mean EVERY night!

I guess so, a few years ago in south london. Was self contained within a big building with a shared coin operated laundry. Electricity was on a pre pay card thing. Rent was about £600.

Some of the units were actual flats but most were bedsit/studios. A few had balconies!

My neighbour was crazy though and I had to call the police on him in fear of my physical safety.

Oh yes! That really takes me back! In 1990 My sister and I shared a tiny bed sit in on the first floor of a converted three-storey terraced house in London for about 6 months. We had one very small bedroom with twin beds, our own minute kitchen attached, but loo and shower (so tiny I’m sure they were converted broom cupboards) shared with other occupants of our floor. No outdoor space, and not even an armchair in our ‘flat’. The meter for our ‘flat’ took 50p pieces, and the shared shower meter took 10p pieces. The water went cold if your money ran out! Saving grace was the sole BT payphone for the whole place which malfunctioned and did not deduct any money from your BT card, so we all had free calls for a while. Then a very selfish individual idividual moved in who would be on the phone almost all the time to chat phone lines. Our bedroom door was on a very tight hinge and we and our visitors managed to get ourselves locked out on several occasions requiring the attendance of the fire brigade to climb in through our window and open the door for us. But once we were rescued by a group of kind young lads in a house nearby who luckily just happened to have a long ladder in their front garden.

I had a musician boyfriend when I was about 16 who lived in a grotty bedsit in the west end of Glasgow - of course, I thought it was all terribly bohemian and romantic at the time.

Looking back, it was rather grim - shared bathroom and kitchen with about six people, payphone on the ground floor - but it's remarkable what you'll tolerate at a young age.

Dh did, as a student back in the very olden days, so I was round there a lot.
It had a gas fire (shillings in the meter) and a Baby Belling to cook on. Shared bathroom was downstairs and there were always random pubes in the bath.🤮
Rent was 32/6d a week (£1.65) - pretty cheap even then. I was paying £2 for a shared bedroom in someone’s house (shared with a friend).

Many of the above (bedroom with it’s own small kitchenette & shower-room) were called studio flats in the ‘90s. I lived in 2. One had a single bed and one a double.
I loved them both!
It was a step up from a bedroom in a shared house with shared facilities (which I hated!)

i have to say I loved mine. it had a proper cooker and small fridge, no washing machine. I got a spinner and hand washed stuff.
no heating bar a electric fire. meter took old 5ps.
it was in leafy surrey in a nice area.

I lived in one in 2000. It had a bed/living room, a little kitchen and then a shared bathroom and loo outside on the corridor (only shared with 1 other flat). I loved it! I had moved out from living with a crap boyfriend and it was amazing to have my own space. It only cost £150 per month and there was a cleaner for the bathroom which was handy. Shame that condensation poured down the windows but otherwise it was fine.

Yes, I've lived in some real dives - shared houses and bedsits.

Yes, deeply grotty, but I loved it. I lived in two in the same tall Victorian terraced house, and the first room (the attic) was so tiny the cooker was outside on the landing. In the second, the ‘kitchen’ was a sort of cupboard you opened to see shelves, a two-ring hob, mini-fridge etc.I used to have dinner parties where people had to sit on the bed. Anything that didn’t fit in the fridge but needed to be kept cool lived in a metal mesh box on the windowsill.

My terribly posh grandparents fell on hard times, but refused to countenance living outside Kensington. They moved into what they called a mansion flat, but was really a rather nice bedsit. To be honest it was perfect for them, a minute from Harrods.
Unlike the bedsit in High Wycombe that I lived in for a short time. That was grim.

Last year DP attacked our teenage ( 18) son. The police came and advised I move DS out . My friend had some bedsits and offered him one as a temporary solution. He had a cooker , fridge, Tv and own bathroom plus wi fi. My friend is a lovely landlady who really looks after her tenants. They were older than DS but really looked out for him in the few weeks he was there until we could get our own place. He actually quite enjoyed the experience of his own place despite the circumstances.

I lived in several grotty bedsits. One, in Bristol in 1976, had a shared bathroom that was an unheated extension with cracks in the walls. Mushrooms grew in it and one of the girls upstairs kept her moped in there. It was so cold that if you had a bath the water was cold by the time you'd got enough to bath in. I used to go to my friend's flat for a proper bath and just washed at my sink in my room in between.

Each flat had its own electricity coin meter but I discovered that mine was also used for lighting the hallway. Two girls sharing the attic discovered they could open their meter and borrow the money. They always paid it back but once put a five pound note in, intending to change it back to 10ps at some point. The landlord turned up while they were out, though, and saw it. He didn't seem to mind and took the fiver, I suppose it proved they were honest.

It actually wasn't too bad the lads above me and the girls above them in the attic were all nice people.

Yes, in the 2000s and it did feel like the first time I'd had my own place instead of having flatmates.

I had a bedroom and a livingroom/kitchen. The communal bathroom was kept sparkling by an external cleaner - that was fabulous.

I had to move out because the landlady decided she was too old for all the faff and she sold the house. Gutted.