What was wealthy life like in the 1970s and before?

[Ozgirl75]

I was just pondering today, I can imagine and picture what it was like to be wealthy in the 1980s; a Porsche, holidays in Europe, gold fittings etc. But if you were quite wealthy (say earning 500k+ as a business owner, working in the city, banker etc) in the 1950s or 1970s, what was your life like? What did you spend your money on? What was your house like? Where did you live in fact?
i grew up in the 80s and 90s so it’s just hard to imagine proper wealth (not aristo inherited, more like earned money) earlier than that.
Anyone here grow up in wealth from the 40s onwards?

Weekends were mainly riding (which I did pretty seriously for years), tennis, going to watch my brother play rugby etc. No shopping as a leisure activity. Cultural things- theatre and opera. My mum wouldn’t have been seen dead going to a National Trust property as a paying visitor- she’d have thought that was very déclassé 😂

We got lovely things for Christmas but not large amounts. Usually things we wanted for our ponies, new rug or whatever. My sister got a second pony one year which was exciting.

My room was pretty traditional, Laura Ashley, rosettes everywhere and pictures of Milton (the horse not the poet) cut out of magazines. Quite normal for a horsey 80s girl. It was just a very horsey and doggy outdoorsy childhood, very privileged but not flashy.

I would say travel and a nice car were signs of wealth .

There’s a fascinating book called One Fine Day by Mollie Panter-Downes which is all about the shock the upper middle classes received post war when cheap domestic labour post war in the late 1940s wasn’t available any more. Shows this couple in a beautiful house who had been used to a life of leisure with beautiful lawns and meals and entertaining pre war desperately trying to maintain things without a staff of servants. It’s interesting as whilst they are clearly struggling there isn’t too much resentment about how society has changed. I think the move away from domestic service is one we don’t talk about.

I grew up in the 50s in a wealthy family and lived in a large house in N London, we had live-in staff and were privately educated and there was a small working farm for weekend visits. We holidayed in Devon (had a family dog who always came too), quality clothes were bought to last or until they were outgrown, nothing was flashy or worn to draw attention - good manners and consideration for others were drummed into us and we were raised to know how privileged our lifestyle was.

When my father died in the 60s, the Death Duties were astronomical (I think 90% but may be misremembering?) and everything changed. It was a wonderful childhood, very sheltered and strict, but happy and safe and I will always be grateful for it.

I had family who were rich in the 70s/80s. Large house in London suburbs backing onto fields where they kept a couple of horses. Kids privately educated. A Jag and a Daimler on the drive. A gardener and a cleaner. My aunt also worked for the family business, but very part time. They didn’t have much time for holidays so used to make it as easy as possible - 5 star hotels, collected by car at both ends. Expensive clothes, made to last (I used to get the hand me downs - wool skirt and blazer for school, good quality cotton shirts).

I think there was more an attitude of respect and of authority - rich people where I lived were lawyers , hospital consultants, doctors, bank manager, business owner. For many, as there is today, there was a need to be seen to be respectable. So maybe stay at home mothers, home help. One holiday abroad a year. Possibly DC privately schooled.

I had a friend who I met in my late teens . Her df was an ex professional footballer. They lived in a 1930s - ish house , with probably 3/4 bedrooms.

She said their lifestyle was totally different to the footballers lifestyle later on . The players were given a set of China, rather than huge cash bonuses.
Although ,he earned enough for the family to live off .

Ooo that sounds great! I’ll get hold of that.

Id forgotten about Death duties - I think that’s why so many places landed up in NT as it was just impossible for families to run these estates.

I've got a lot of my impressions of what being wealthy and/or upper middle class during the '60s and '70s from Jilly Cooper's non-fiction books.
She was always having trouble making ends meet (I think her husband's publishing business wasn't very successful and she describes hiding to avoid creditors) but despite that seemed to have to have a nanny/au pair and a "char", her children went to private schools and she talks about weekends at country houses (in one, a maid unpacks their case and leaves everything laid out on the bed, including an a half-eaten apple).
I think reading her book "Class" (published in the '70s) gives an idea of the sort of things you're wondering about.

We were solidly middle clsss but my parents had a very wealthy investor in their business. They had no children and therefore built more than just a business relationship with us and other families. They had the most amazing penthouse apartment - probably the best apartment in our city. They had a housekeeper and a chauffeur. They also left a lot of money between the families he supported and to local charities. He paid the deposit on my first home!! A wonderful person who did a lot for their community

My grandparents weren't bankers etc but my grandfather was a doctor and my grandmother was a SAHM in the 60s/70s

They would have had some inherited wealth too but again their parents were doctors/lawyers

They had

• big house with land

-two cars

• nanny, gardener and housekeeper
• holiday house in UK (inherited)
• all four children at private school/ the boys at public schools once old enough
• modern furnishings mixed with inherited furniture
• high quality musical instruments for the children
• regular dinner parties

I think the two huge things were the respect (or awe or deference) you got in a more rigid class based society, and DOMESTIC HELP!! Expectation for well off women to have house help, garden help, not to work AND to have kids possibly at boarding school - termly! Can you imagine!!

There were a lot of upper class people for a very long time who literally had never made their own breakfast in their lives. The only way we can imagine it now is as if we were in a five star hotel and had chosen the breakfast we liked best. I.e., there was no menu, whatever you most liked could be made everyday.

One of the reasons agatha Christie is so great is her books span from 1918 or so through to the 1960s and servants and wealth always feature, so you can see the change! An early one has lady’s maids, cooks and butlers, a post war one has one European war refugee ‘help’, a sixties one has modern office girls living in a flat alone shock horror!

Below Stairs is a great read if you like this kind of thing.

For some reason the title of this thread made me think of the entertainers who dominated Saturday night telly in the 70s.

Cilla Black, Bruce Forsyth, Jimmy Tarbuck et al.

They were very wealthy and conspicuous consumers. Badly capped teeth, fur coats (men and women), huge modern houses in Surrey - often attached to a golf course where they hosted celebrity golf tournaments with their mates. Drove Rolls Royces, had second homes in Marbella and were very pleased with themselves.

I was just going to suggest Jilly Cooper books from the 70s and 80s too.

This is very accurate. I’ll add:
fur coats and hats that went into winter storage at Harrods
lots of travel, with a matching luggage set and where you dressed for the flight
membership of clubs like Morton’s, the playboy, annabel’s
sheets taken away and laundered / pressed and returned in a hard box with a leather strap around it
accounts at the butcher, fishmonger, grocer who all deliveRed
full time gardener, housekeeper and some time au pairs
heated pool, with someone who came round to do swimming lessons for the kids
exervise classes at home - a handful of friends over and an instructor who came to the house
a dressmaker to make or alter everything shop boughy
a lady who “filled the freezer” (pre ready meals, so someone who home cooked good food to freeze)

my parents both grew up in proper grinding poverty so it was pretty incredible that they lived this way.

@Vermin do you mind me asking what your parents did to become wealthy?

@Ozgirl75 my Dad grew up in a wealthy family. Cleared off to South Africa before he was born and he was raised by Nannies, had a fleet of servants etc. moved back to the UK mid 1970s and he went to boarding school. Social life revolved around the golf/country club.

My dad ran a business. My mum had been a model before they met but didn’t work after - her connections meant they got entry to alll the fanciest restaurants etc in 60s London (& her photographer pals meant their wedding photos were on the front of most of tabloids- there were no reality tv stars then 😂). Her mates also made for great parties. My dad died when I was young so my mum didn’t end her life in the same style and despite my expensive education, I never managed to have horses / ponies for my kids! They got the school though.

People aspired so much to become rich especially in 1960s and 70s that 'doing the pools ' was a big thing.
One person -Viv Nicholson- won 150k- at that time a huge amount - in the early 1960s . She became immortalised for saying that shed Spend spend spend.. There was a documentary and a book about her .. that is interesting to look up if you want to know what aspirations newly wealthy people had at that time .
Layer in the 70s a Pools syndicate at our work won something like 350k however ot was split x10 but even then it was enough for some of them to but house and holidays and think of leaving work .. It was so exciting the management were seriously worried that they'd lose everyone in the lucky department at once ! Sadly ,I wasn't in the syndicate ..

The wealthier people we knew in the 1970s had better social lives than us and holidayed abroad. They also had boats (we lived near the coast) and sent private schools. Their SAHM mums also had cleaners. We had and did none of those things and I was a smidge jealous!

Not much different from now - the wealthiest people I know have the nicest holidays (and or have second homes) and educate privately!

We are now wealthy and have lovely holidays though didn't educate privately - through choice not circumstance. And I've just treated myself to a cleaner.

I read Susannah Constantine’s autobiography recently. She writes an interesting account of growing up in a wealthy family in the 60s and 70s.

From what I can gather from books and films set at the time, life for a well-off woman in the UK was pretty boring and unfulfilling.

It seems to have centred around being the perfect accessory for the husband - being able to make small talk at business dinners and at the golf club, keeping oneself slim and well-presented, shopping, perfecting one’s soufflé for dinner parties, keeping up with the Joneses in terms of the home.

Many didn’t even have their children at home during term time.

Probably explains why so many were on Valium and having affairs.

Fascinating stuff, thank you to everyone who has replied! Plus thanks for the book recommendations as well. I’d forgotten the Pools too - my grandparents did them religiously! Never won though.

You should watch To the Manor Born which also stars Penelope Keith (Margo from The Good Life) it captures the difference/tensions between old money and new money in the late 70s/early 80s