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.

Misrepresenting the past?
So another one who doesn't believe that this is actually how we lived.
Nice.

Ah, so people like me misrepresenting my childhood. Our landlord wasn’t a slum landlord, the flats they were providing more than what was required of a landlord at the time (late 1990’s), the only change there would be now is that they would be required to provide some form of heating (no, a fridge doesn’t count).

When I was a child in the 40s/50s, we had a coal fire in the living room. That was it. In winter we had our weekly baths in a tin bath in front of the fire.

Oh FFS I have not said I disbelieve anyone.

Yes people lived without central heating however the majority (not all) had some means of heating in the home. This may only have been in certain rooms, and it may have been used infrequently but it would have helped to avoid damp and mould. It would have been unpleasant but better than nothing at all.

As can be evidenced from this thread many people (not all) will say they lived without heating but then say that they had a fire/stove/whatever.

Some people will have lived without any heating at all. Some people slept on the streets. That doesn't mean that people should be made to feel bad for struggling to manage this winter because other have it harder!

Yes you can buy fairly cheap electric heaters. Doesn't mean you can afford to run it. It's a pretty crap ornament.

The people all over social media who say something like:

"People need to toughen up we didn't have heating when I was a kid and I was fine, ice on the windows, see your breath coat on the bed etc. We used to warm our clothes on the stove before we put them on"

Are being misleading. It isn't that they are lying, I believe them, it is a fair representation of how many lived. It isn't a fair equivalent to someone now who doesn't have a stove/fire/etc turning off their boiler for the whole of winter.

No one is saying that a small stove downstairs kept the bedrooms toasty, they are just saying that it was better than nothing.

And nobody, on this thread, or the other has done that, except the (thankfully now awol) OP. She actually berates people struggling on other threads and tells them to work more hours to get warm. She tells people constantly they are lying. She's a piece of work and AS is useful because it shows that for all her "the govt are shits and people shouldn't have to live like this" (yes they are, and no, they shouldn't) she is still coming at this from a superior viewpoint where all she does is talk down to people.
SHE is the typical "haul yourself up by your bootstraps, people have it worse than you" poster, not the other people calling her out.

She OBVIOUSLY started this thread to have a pop at the people on the other thread who basically said the same as the people on this one. They didn't have HEAT. They didn't have WARMTH. They were COLD.

They might had a coal fire but they might not have had coal. Etc.

The people "all over social media" are not the people on these two threads that the OP is calling liars.

I grew up and n the 70s and 80s in that time we lived in 5 houses. Only the last house that we moved into in my teens had central heating. I first 2 houses had coal fires in the living room which we used in the evening only. Bedrooms where still cold and yes we scrapped ice off the inside of the windows. The next 2 had gas fires only in the living room so again was turned on in the morning and the evening, again ice cold bedrooms etc. It was only in the last house around 1986 that we had central heating. Don't assume we have forgotten our childhood memories, I'm only in my late 40s and can remember my childhood vividly.

Well maybe that's what the OP is up to but my observations are of comments I have seen on here and elsewhere. There are even posts on this thread saying "I didn't have heating" when what they mean is they didn't have central heating

I've never had my heating on overnight. When I lived in Scotland I had 'winter pyjamas', 13.5 tog duvet, and on the coldest nights would take a hot water bottle to bed. Wouldn't have crossed my mind to turn central heating on overnight.

That was us until I was 10. For us it was normal....a fire in the fireplace in the living room and absolutely nothing in the bedrooms. I remember breathing on the window to make a hole in the 'Jack Frost' painting on the window. But that was then - no one should be living like that now and I'm so sorry for those who haven't enough money to heat their homes sufficiently.

To my eternal shame, in the late 80's I was a suddenly a single parent to a baby and a toddler and living in a rented house with coin meters, even my tv had a coin meter. The gas man came to empty the meter one day and forgot to put the lock back on the meter. I got through the winter of 88 by using the same 50p over and over again.
When he came again in the spring, he didnt say a word, just took what was in it and put the lock back on. I still feel guilty about stealing gas.

this bears repeating. The OP is saying that not putting the heating on is an impossible "goal." That even back in the days of no heat being common, there was still SOME sort of heat a fire downstairs maybe and it was miserably cold.

In 1960 a full-time female manual worker earned £7 6 shillings and by 1965 it had risen to £9 4 shillings - in both cases half of the man's wage. I can't imagine how small the cheapest model must have been.

One thing you are not thinking about is that although Victorian houses were built with fire places lots of Victorians lived in houses of multiple occupancy so an entire family would live in one room.

It was also common for people to share beds.

On one of the 'back in time for' I'm sure they said poor people would buy a pie because coal was expensive but a pie would be hot.

We had a coal fire in the living room. So no heat in the mornings because it took too long to go outside for the coal and then set the fire. We did have a fire in that room in the evenings if we could afford the coal, but the other rooms were always freezing and damp. Baths were taken once a week in front of that fire, in a tin bath. I wouldn't recommend it. It was a hardship that few can conceive of tolerating now.

Many many houses were indeed very damp and mouldy so you are quite wrong.

"Yes you can buy fairly cheap electric heaters. Doesn't mean you can afford to run it. It's a pretty crap ornament.!

I lived very happily with electric heaters (ones installed by my LL and stuck to the wall) for 6 years. I was warmer than with my gas central heating now and it was better because I could use individual timer plugs.
Of course, you have to be able to afford to run them, but they were cheaper a few years ago than gas central heating is now I suppose.

I was born at the beginning of the 1960s. The first two houses we lived in were heated by open fires, but we also had a couple of electric bar fires to supplement them, including one that hung high up on the bathroom wall. In the mid 70s we had night storage heaters fitted.

I knew two people who had no electricity in their houses and who just used open fires for warmth. I don't remember anyone from those days who had no open fires.

I lived in the poshest estate in my village in the 80s and my dad was a director of a company. We only had an electric fire in the living room.

The Tories don't care if you can't afford to heat your home. They'll have all the poor on prepayment meters, and when you can't afford to top them up, that's your hard luck. You will have no heating. I have central heating in my flat and I can't afford to put it on. I'm 68, this winter will kill me. When I was small we had one open fire in the sitting room - that heated the water too. We'd just heat that room. In the rest of the flat there was ice inside the windows. We were often ill, even had TB. I thought that the bad old days were over, but they're back and worse than before.

I grew up in East London with no heating, apart from an electric fire in the living room. No heating at all in the bedrooms. An electric heater on the bathroom wall which was very inefficient and the walls had mildew on them.

People live to play the martyr . I was without power 4 days during last year storms in Scotland. My bedroom was 4c after 24 hours without power , but it’s a fireplace going most of that time . That’s actually colder than the inside of a fridge . I date those people claiming that nonsense to come and stay at mine mid February for a week and I will disconnect all power .

From Earliest times settlers built living accommodation round the central hearth. Saxon long barns housed the cow and pigs in the other half and the family behind wattle and daub interior wall with the warmth from the animals. Up to 15th century everyone slept round central fire with opening in roof for smoke. Only the master and mistress slept separately. In Shakespeare’s time there was the inglenook which heated the whole house and for cooking and hot water boiled for washing. Housing in 19th century was terraced with central range which warmed whole house and next door too. Winters used to be much colder but there was always ‘heating’.