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.

In a nice modern house I would agree that putting the heating on for an hour would improve the over all temperature… however I moved up north and lived in an end terrace Edwardian house with an old boiler and no insulation. You had the heating on for an hour and then the freezing cold was biting. I had never felt cold like it. Some of the stories I’ve heard around here of more impoverished times where people had no money and were burning their fences to keep warm. Remember fires need fuel too.

• kitchen range

Yay, let's all go back to Victorian fkin Britain.
I lived without central heating for years and do not want to go back to that horrendous time, thanks.

My house as a child had one gas fire in the living room but was a very large 3 bedroom house. There was no other heating anywhere, including bathroom. This was the 90s.
we were very very cold a lot growing up.
im perfectly happy to not have the heating on just yet, it’s not even cold yet to be honest. We were all outside in just t shirts today. I am confident we will get to at least after Christmas with using heavy duvets, blankets, hot water bottles. And then when it’s very cold we will be able to use the heating because we will have not used the money now.
i think maybe you were just quite lucky growing up if you really think houses have always had heating of some kind. 1 small gas fire in 1 room in a large house doesn’t constitute heating when and where it matters!

In the days of my nannas, that had one fire downstairs which was used to heat up bricks to put in beds so yes there was heating, albeit just one source. Still a really hard time and when it was cold it was extremely cold! X

You seem to be missing the point that gas, wood, coal and other sources cost money too. If people can’t afford electricity they may well not be able to afford alternatives. I was in church today and they are opening churches during the week as a warm place to go and to warm up. Now that is free.

It’s true, before central heating, there were fireplaces. Just read Dickens no fire at all was anjevt poverty even then.

A lot of the housing stock here will be ruined without some heating. It keeps damp out of the walls.

Ditto. I grew up in a house with no heating. We wore jumpers on top of our fleece pjs with socks and a hat. We also had hot water bottles. I had ice on the inside of my bedroom window.

You’re utterly unreasonable people didn’t have heating just because their house/flat/room had a fireplace or oven.

The poor would literally freeze to death because they could not afford coals or wood it was even worse than it is now. You could not just go out and take it. Same as poaching you could get hanged for taking it from your lord!

That's though like saying people were without kitchens because they couldn't afford food.

The houses had heating, it is different matter whether people could run it. It's the literal sense which is discussed

Same ^. We had one fire in the living room no where else. We also had metal framed windows and the ice formed on the inside. I used to steal blankets from my sister or brothers bed.
I went to bed dressed like I was going outside.
Very few people had anything different, not where I grew up anyway.

We did have a fireplace in the house we grew up in, but believe it or not we very rarely could afford to buy coal. So yes, we had a house with no heating for most of the year. We also struggled with being able to afford putting the gas cooker on, so often ate cold food or warmed the food up at school.

Our first home in 1980 had no central heating. We had a gas fire in the living room, and an immersion heater for water. That was it. The bedrooms were always freezing in the winter and we invested in hot water bottles, layered up clothing and used warm blankets to watch tv on the sofa. You couldn’t hang around in the bathroom either during the winter months - showers were very short !!

We also had an electric key. Charged via going to local post office or Co op. In the 1990s. My parents still use it. It would often run out and they would use the emergency £5 back up it had, then that would run out before anyone went to add money on key. So no heating, and then electricity often out for 2-3 days.

I remember being at secondary school, telling them I couldn’t do homework as electric had ran out, and them putting me in detention for ‘lying’

I understand totally what you are saying, some people choose not to understand what is being said. Yes, some people grew up in awful conditions and were cold and hungry but yes, they did have alternative options (if affordable) to heat their house. Nowadays often those other options have gone. However people view OPs post, we really should be directing our anger elsewhere...and not forget the anger about why we are in this frankly god damm awful situation as a country. It is awful that in this day and age people are having to choose food or being warm, through absolutely no fault of their own. This is what I'm angry about and this is the unreasonable situation we find ourselves in.

I lived in a matchbox with a very small paraffin stove....

I'm not that old but the house I lived in had a single gas fire in the lounge that was only turned on in the evening. No open fires or radiators. It did have one of those wall mounted electric heaters in the bathroom though (downstairs obviously).

Unless those who claim to have had no heating were in detached homes, they would have been partially heated by the adjoining homes.

We've twice been suckered by neighbours who "never use their heating" whilst benefitting from our heating. Once in a ground floor flat, where oute heating bills were extraordinary - morecthan most paid for 3 bed homes. Then again in a semi.

I get sick of people boasting about their miserliness, when in all likelihood their neighbours are heating their homes through the wall.

Why are people accusing @KangarooKenny of “misremembering”? We had a fireplace in the lounge and no other heating. We had ice on the inside of our windows as others have described and had hot water bottles. Beds then had sheets, blankets and a bedspread. There were no oil filled radiators etc or if there were we didn’t have one. This was late 60s, early 70s. We eventually had central heating installed when I was about 7 - early 70s.

if you’re under about 50 you probably can’t remember not having your homes heated but many of us who are older definitely can!

PS I bought my first flat in the late 80s it was considered prohibitively expensive and guess what? It had NO CENTRAL HEATING just a gas fire in the lounge.

YABU
First, we have got used to central heating so it is harder to cope without.
Second, for most working class families, only the living room was heated when I was growing up.
I now live in a Victorian property snd we have original fireplaces and there’s one in every room, so the rich were warm, but when I grew up in a council flat it was only the front room that hit heated.
I remember icicles on taps and no water as it had frozen, my bedroom was so so cold it was hard to sleep, there were icicles on the insides of the windows. I don’t want to go back to that for my kids, or anyone else’s kids. That’s not progress.

In the 70's, I grew up in a farmhouse with an Aga in the kitchen and an open fire in the living room. That was the only heating in the whole house.
Eventually, we got a couple of portable heaters, but we were only allowed to use these occasionally.
My mum used to pile blankets and coats on the beds to keep us kids warm. There was ice on the inside of the single glaze windows. The house was draughty and very cold from October until March.
I had no idea there was any such thing as central heating until I was about 11 and went to a friend's house in the town. I was absolutely amazed!

I was a child in the 1950s. There was no spare cash. My nan and grandad had an old coal fired range which was why we spent so much time in their living kitchen, which was the warmest place in the house. Beyond the living kitchen, it was hellish cold. I remember a gas fire somewhere, and a paraffin heater. But I too am infuriated by people who try to tell us they managed fine without heating. It isn't that it didn't happen, because of course it did. But we didn't 'manage fine'. It was, not to put too fine a point on it, shite. I for one, had serious asthma and bronchitis every single winter. And I wasn't alone. Cold is a killer for young and old alike.

We lived in a house with a fireplace but no central heating. The lounge would get warm but you had to sit very close to the fire to feel the heat.
The other rooms had no heating. We had a small electric fire that was carried around the house & put in the bedroom when undressing for bed. There was also a paraffin heater in the bathroom. These were notoriously dangerous & many children were burned when their pyjamas caught fire, as the fabric wasn’t fire retardant in those days.
Hot water bottles were also used in bed, but went cold quickly. As other posters have said, there was often ice on the inside of the windows.
My parents lived in that house all their lives. Eventually my father had electric storage units put in. However, due to the high cost of using them, only a few were used unless it was more cold than usual.
I think we just got used to being cold. Dad didn’t ever get hypothermia, in fact he lived to be nearly 100.
This is how it was.

I'm in my 60's. I grew up in a house with no heating. Small fire in the living room is all. The house was always freezing in the winter and we also had ice inside the windows. Hot water bottles in the bed and fleecy thick pyjamas were all we had.
My own first home also had no heating until we had saved up enough to have it put in.

Younger people have no idea.

So true! People need to understand that in the UK if you don’t heat a home it gets damp which then causes illness / damages to the house