Where did you keep your landline in your childhood home?

[BeCraftyFatball]

On a table By the couch

One in the hall, one in the kitchen and one in my parents bedroom.

In the 80s "party line" referred to those premium rate phone lines that you could "chat" to complete strangers on, for 60 pence a minute, if you had more money than sense/were running up your parents bill were so inclined.

The hall, I can see I theme here lol

On the hall table with a chair next to it, parents never got a a 2nd phone point. It's still there but no one ever rings it now 😞. Had the best chats with my pals sitting on that chair in the hall.

I'm pretty sure party lines were shared phone lines. I remember my Grandma having one and being annoyed she kept answering the phone and it being for her neighbours not her.

We didn't have a hallway. The front door opened into a tiny square porch then directly into the living room with an open plan stairway. This meant that DB and I could sneak out of our bedrooms and sit on the stairs to watch X rated horror films through the gaps in the banister. Any movement from our unsuspecting parents would send us silently scurrying back to bed. #makingmemories

I know, I was referring to the later 0898 lines with the tacky late night TV adverts.

That definitely wasn't what my friend was talking about 😅 She meant a phone line that you shared with a neighbour. @CottageGate mentioned it upthread, I'd never heard of it until today!

In the front room, next to mums chairs. There were no secret conversations in our house 😅

No, I only learned about shared phone lines relatively recently myself. It sounds like something out of the Ark! 🤣

I mean, who could resist the temptation? 🤷‍♀️

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=GMIr9zXC_7g&pp=0gcJCU8Co7VqN5tD

There was no landline in my childhood home. My parents were not on the phone until the mid 1970s. I got my first phone age 23 when I moved into a flat where the previous occupiers had a landline. So I just paid a reconnection fee. Phones then were almost all black bakelite until the trimphone came in blue, green and red.

Ours was on Mum's desk - in the dining room.

We had a party line in the late 1960’s when we first had a phone. It was cheaper line rental if you shared with a neighbour. Our phone didn’t ring if it was an incoming call for the neighbour.

Basically it meant that you couldn’t make or receive a phone call if the neighbour was already on a call. The only way to know was to lift the handset and if you heard the neighbour’s voice instead of a dialling tone. We’d quietly apologise and hang up and try again later.

We had lovely neighbours and it worked fine for a couple of years till they moved. The new neighbour used to lift the phone during our calls and think we couldn’t hear her staying on the line to eavesdrop. So my parents ended the party line arrangement and paid extra rental for a solo line.

I remember my friend having a party line with their neighbour in the early 80s. We called those tacky premium rate services chat lines. There was a thing called Dial A Disc too where you could phone up and hear chart music being played. And phoning TIM to get the exact time. My parents were fairly relaxed about phone bills as they had big families 100s of miles away so using the phone a lot for long distance calls etc was fairly normal, but we were supposed to wait till after 6pm.

But the bills weren’t itemised back then so no one really knew whose calls cost what.

In the hall between a cupboard and the wall on a small shelf with both telephone directories, and a pad with a pen attached next to it. It was 1970 so the telephone was quite big back then and most definitely not cordless.

On a shelf which was on top of the radiator in the hallway and another one in the kitchen. Later parents also had one in their bedroom.

First house, telephone table in the hall. Then C we moved and had hall, kitchen, lounge, study, parents bedroom and bathroom. Somewhat excessive late 80s!

On a little half circle table in the hall.