To explain to people that UK homes have never 'not had heating'

[KweenieBeanz]

People keep responding to those worrying about energy costs, don't worry, homes never used to have heating, people survived, just don't put your heating on!
Home did not have central heating. Instead, they had fires and heated individual homes. People did not live in homes with no heating in the UK.

In the UK during the winter if a home is never heated even by late November /December temperatures inside will have gradually dropped to a temperature that's too low.
See the info here: www.cse.org.uk/advice/advice-and-support/heat-and-health#:~:text=Below%2013%C2%B0%20%2D%20If%20your,recommended%20night%20time%20bedroom%20temperature.

There is a huge difference if you even use your heating for just 1hr a day, topping up the temperature to stop it dropping so rapidly.

People need to stop acting as though those struggling just need to toughen up, 'wear more layers' and cope with the heating off this winter as a solution to energy costs, as it's simply not feasible, and it would be better for people to take action now to let their energy provider know they are in fuel poverty and need to access help.

Not disbelieving you lovely. The sixties were peculiar for so called "improving" houses and really poor housing. The house was designed with a heating source (fire). But you were left without. Your poor mum trying to keep you both going because your dad fucked off.

Even houses with a heat source might not have been able to use it.

As an illustration of early seventies housing being a bit shit. My mum's friend lived in a two up two down with no bathroom and an outside loo that you had to walk across the back and up the side of another house and then cross the road to reach.

The second bedroom had a ceiling that sloped down to almost floor level and a window low near the floor.

The living room was tiny.

Housing was really poor in places.

My mum in the nineteen-thirties lived in a house with no water source indoors. We don't want to be going back to that either.

But wasn't that in the villas of the rich

Homes with electricity don’t come with electric or oil filled radiators automatically installed. We couldn’t have used those things as we didn’t own them.

No you have to buy them and if you can’t afford to do that it’s possible you can’t afford to run a central heating system either. Although the modernised flat we moved into in the 1960s had a 2 bar electric fire fitted in the living room with a rather snazzy mantle piece (very common for the time) though you were expected to sort out the other rooms for yourself.

ABU for using the term "heating source".

There times when we almost lived in the kitchen as the heat source was the cooker.
I know people whose only heat source is the arga.

Was the house built with a means to heat the front room? yes it was.
Could we afford to use it? No we couldn't.

We just had an electric bar heater in the living room, and I remember I'd bring my clothes downstairs and get dressed there, because it was too cold to get dressed in the bedroom. The water pressure was rubbish too, so it was impossible to have a hot bath unless you boiled pans of water!

But strangely, when we went to my Gran's house (with central heating) I didn't like it. I felt sluggish and lazy. It was as if the constant warmth made me drowsy. I preferred going from cold to warm to cold rooms.

I think some posters are deliberately misunderstanding the OP. She is saying that all houses will have been built with some source of heating, whether it was a fireplace, gas or electric fires, central heating or other source. The fact that this source of heating is no longer available or unaffordable is not what she is talking about.

Our first house had no central heating, and just a gas fire in the front room and one in the kitchen. The first winter of our married life (1981/82) was so cold that it regularly went down to -15 at night. We would wear pyjamas, socks and sweatshirts in bed. We had an electric blanket and the duvet had several blankets over it. We would wake up to ice completely covering the windows. After several days of this the entire street's water froze and we had to use a standpipe at the end of the road.

We would huddle round the gas fire that we could only afford to use one bar on as the gas meter would eat up 50p pieces so quickly.

I vividly remember how cold I was, and I never want to be that cold again.

So I feel for those of you who are facing this this winter.

Nice middle class assumptions there, not everyone lived in a flat or house or cottage. My parents grew up in rooms, without bathrooms (they were outside) and with an oven on the landing. My partner was the same and he is only 60, grew up in North London

I think that's another thing.

Times have changed & bedrooms aren't just used for sleeping in.

I was brought up in a Victorian semi with no heating in the bedrooms.

We used to have hot water bottles in Winter.

Put nightclothes on in front of the fire downstairs, rush into bed & hope you didn't need a wee in the night!

It being an old house though you'd get ice on the inside of the bedroom windows.

That's obviously not good so those rooms really could have done with heating at some point to stop them just getting colder & colder in Winter.

What sort of property did you live in. Tenements had ranges, crofts have/had fires. Houses had fires. Ive never been anywhere so poor there's been no facility to heat or cook.

Poverty and not being able to afford it is a different matter.

When I was very young (early 70s) we lived in a flat where there was no built in heating (central, or a fire place, or even an 3 bar electric fire). We had hot water bottles and the cooker (kitchen was often quite toasty) plus a small fan heater that we moved from room to room,. I remember lying in front of it like a cat! I do remember that one of my mum’s friends used to come round with her son sometimes because we had that fan heater. The didn’t have one in their flat because they couldn’t afford the “leccy”.

Later(late 70s - late 80s) we moved in with my grand parents and there was an open fire in the lounge. But we couldn’t afford coal always so we would sometimes decide to spend the evening in the kitchen, which was warmer because dinner had been cooked on the stove.

Then we moved into a terrace house. It had central heating but it wasn’t very effective and we didn’t use it much. In the winter there was ice on the windows. But downstairs we had three bar electric fires in the the boarded up fireplaces and we used them. Also had a tumble dryer that vented directly int o the kitchen and that was the warmest, loveliest place in the house when it was really cold.

When people say “just don’t put on the heating” I never read that as meaning “just don’t put the heating on ever.” I read it as meaning “just don’t put the heating on as much”.

@bruffin I wasn't making the point that central heating during the Roman period was common, just how advanced they were!

There will be no heating in my house this year (unless the kids beg me when they come home for Christmas). So far, I'm quite enjoying it, as I'm viewing it as a battle between me and Putin/the energy companies.

I will win this one. Bring it on.

I wonder how many on here don't remember coin meters for electricity.

It absolutely does change the point because those people (my family for example) grew up in accommodation (not full houses or flats or cottages) without a heating source other than the oven.

I was lucky, we had an open fire until 1980 when my parents got central heating put in. No heating upstairs, my mum didnt trust gas heaters.

Some houses didn't have heating! In the 1990s I lived in a terraced house that had had all of the fireplaces ripped out and no central heating. Yes it was mouldy and damp! It took several years for me to save up the money for gas central heating to be fitted. They were very uncomfortable years.

Many people will remember ice on the windows and frozen water in the toilet, but this doesn't mean that they had no heating. It was quite common, even when fires/stoves were used, it is not evidence that people managed without fires as some suggest.

I agree. I grew up in the 1960s and didn’t know anybody who had no heating at all. Whether they actually used it, or not, was another matter.

We had a fireplace in the living room downstairs and in two of the three bedrooms upstairs. Only the living room fire was ever lit. Coal was expensive. We also had a paraffin heater lit in the bathroom on bath night.

We weren’t constantly ill.

Nice middle class assumptions there, not everyone lived in a flat or house or cottage. My parents grew up in rooms, without bathrooms (they were outside) and with an oven on the landing. My partner was the same and he is only 60, grew up in North London

I wouldn't say in was typical to grow up like that in the U.K. in the 60s though & if you didn't you were middle class? My parents are in their 70s & were immigrants & bought a house. Not untypical as I grew up in a part of London with high immigration & obviously much more social housing. A neighbour did have an "outdoor toilet", but it wasn't really outdoors, it was at the back of the house & the door was only accessible by going outside.

Shame. I used to live in a Victorian semi and loved the bedroom fireplace feature (obviously no longer in use). I didn't actually realise they weren't a feature of all Victorian semis when built! Are you sure it hasn't just been plasterboarded over?

I remember coin meters for rented televisions

We need to accept that moving away from fossil fuel is going to impact severely how much we are paying for energy. Fossil has been the cheapest energy source for thousands of years and switching to cleaner energy has a price tag consequence. The problem is that the price is not affecting society in the same way - while it doesn't affect people on high incomes, paying a few thousand more, it's affecting middle and lower incomes very seriously. This is why governments should intervene by making policies protecting middle and lower incomes. Unfortunately, it's not what most governments are doing.

Same here. OP seems to think the Victorian homes with fireplaces had a cosy fire burning in each room. Er no they didn't. We had a gas fire in the dining room and a coal fire in the living room and bedrooms like fridges.

If we wanted to be warm at night watching TV we had to light a coal fire which stank and took ages to warm the room.

In bed at home, it was a hot water bottle, ice on the inside of the windows during winter. I used to put my coat over my duvet to get extra heat.

At uni neither my Victorian halls nor my shared house had any form of heating in the bedrooms. My uni room even had a ventilation brick pumping freezing cold air in, which I had to block with newspaper as it was so cold.

We also had no phone, no car, no fridge or TV while I was very young. I'm mid fifties and my parents were middle class.

@KweenieBeanz would you like some glue?

Between 2010 and 2014 my home had no heating (no working heating) my boiler failed and as a single parent living in poverty I could not afford to have it replaced. As I was living in poverty and it was a case of keeping lights on and gas hob working I could only afford to put a minimal amount in the meter to pay for consumption the standing charge and to pay of my fuel debt.
I could not afford to buy another heater....I had utility bills and food bills and a mountain of debt. My ex husband left me with huge debts and in fear for my life (yes literally) I was desperate to save the £560 to start divorce proceedings and the choice of living in a house with no form of working heating or divorcing the man that gaslighted me to a suicide attempt and multiple threats to kill me ( yes police and courts involved) 3 guesses which one I chose!
Do not even think about coming for me on this! People live incredibly complex and often difficult lives that you have absolutely no clue about.
Rather than comparing apples and pineapples do something about it and volunteer at a food bank or similar..... if people in extreme fuel poverty have to choose between food and heating they chose food....helping provide food reduces this poverty to mean they might be able to afford heating some days

Like lots of pps, I grew up with no central heating and only one room downstairs heated by, first, coal fire and later, gas fire as my parents could not afford the bills to heat more rooms. This may have been said already but none of us had double glazing either (1950s & 1960s) which made homes even colder than most would be today. Definitely regular frost inside bedroom windows (London suburb).

My parents house has central heating but it is an old cottage with single glazed windows and they had ice on the inside in the morning. It is possible to have both especially if you don't turn the heating on until 7am!

"But after a chimney fire she became too scared to light it and after that there was NO HEATING AT ALL."

But you HAD a fire, just that your mum was too scared to use it.
Some parents deciding not to turn the heating on (cruel as I think it is) is not the same as not having any heating/fire.