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.

This is really offensive to kangarookenny. It's not for you to tell KK that their experience is wrong and misremembered I totally believe they had no heating.

Good point. It's pretty insulting to effectively call people liars or delusional (because they were children and can't remember correctly). I was born in a poor area in the 1950's. We had some heating (but not much). But I clearly recall friends homes that had none at all because they couldn't afford the coal. In one or two, the only "cooker" was also the coal fire, and when they couldn't afford the coal there was no hot food in the house. In particular I recall my mum sending us around to Ruth's house (a girl from my class at primary school) with a pot of stew or a bit of coal because her mam had nothing and her dad was "feckless". It's true that few families had absolutely nothing at all, but many of us were close to the edge and may have only had one heated room (we did). If you've ever lived like that, believe me you do know what cold is. But that isn't the same thing as thinking it's ok for people to live without being able to afford heating in 2022.

Of course it’s not acceptable to expect people to live like that. But the point is, there are plenty of people who have had to live like that. Whether we want to believe it or not.

Houses in this country were built and designed to be heated (I think that’s the point you’ve been trying to make?).But fuel poverty has always existed. There have always been those who have had the privilege of having plenty of heating and warmth, whilst many others have suffered without. In more recent times, more people have had the privilege of warmth than ever before, but I’ve been a primary teacher for a decade and I’ve seen many examples of children living in poverty being cold and hungry in that time. The only difference this year is that many more will be joining them.

I’m sure our very wealthy PM will stay toasty though.

OP, are you actually telling people they are misremembering their own childhood? You have a naive and sheltered view of how many people lived before your time. And believe it or not, there will be people on the UK living with no heating, fires, plug in heaters etc in 2022. Just because you don't think it happens doesn't make it the truth.

According to my Dad We could only afford the coal/logs/kindling because he didn't have to first off pay for mobile phones/broadband/sky/credit cards

The food and fuel money took priority....what was left went on those kind of things

This was common until the 60's but even in the 70's they were building (council) homes with no heating upstairs, my ex grew up in a house with only one gas fire in the living room.

Indeed but in the 60s and 70s, electric heaters were available to have installed or plug in and that would have been the expectation. Or the use of hot water bottles or electric blankets as bedrooms don't necessarily need to be heated if only being used to sleep in. If people weren't buying and using the heaters, it was because they couldn't afford them or chose not to spend their money on that (c.f. poverty, or neglect). These houses would have immersion heaters meaning the bit of the room near the airing cupboard, and clothes came out of there nice and warm, we always had our clothes for the day there overnight in the winter.

I would add, I grew up in an 18th century house massively thick walls but single glazed, did have central heating which we did put on, also had a stove in the living room for wood/coal and an oil fired aga in the kitchen....and I still remember ice on the inside of the windows on cold mornings in winter. Just because we didn't leave the heating on all night. (Obviously not comparing this to childhoods which were too cold for comfort).

… Oh yes, forgot about the immersion heater we had for the water (which went on before baths) so not totally in the dark ages!

So where has the op gone???

@KweenieBeanz ??

Houses in this country were built and designed to be heated (I think that’s the point you’ve been trying to make?)

Yes it is pretty obvious from the outset that this is the key point the OP is making?! And that most people did heat those homes to an extent even if the extent wasn't very much and not like we have become used to these days.

Related but different comment - it's so warm (sw)! I finally put my heating on this week as mornings were getting chilly but I kicked my covers off because my room is 24 degrees! I set it at 18 (as normal never had it higher) and the radiators haven't come on. Weird weather. Think my neighbours must have theirs on high, advantage of being terraced

OP is very young and thinks we all lived at Downton with our roaring open fires keeping us toasty.

OP is somehow shoehorning in a bit of ageism by trying to tell older people they are lying when they say they had no heating.

Or, like me, is quite old, and hears people saying they had no heating when they mean no central heating. If you have an open fire you have heating, if you have electricity, you have heating, then there’s alternatives like parrafin or Calor gas. People may have been too poor to use these forms of heating but that’s another matter; and running central heating has never been free either.

There were millions of slum houses that were either hugely made over or torn down completely in the 50 to 70s

My dads house was torn down and the replacement had a single coal fire in the living room which also heated the water

It doesn't really detract from the point that the OP was making though. Which is that living without heating (central or otherwise) is not to be recommended.

We had electricity in our flat, can you please explain how cables in the walls heated our flat.

I grew up in a council house - I remember the central heating being installed in the late 80’s. The whole estate with insulation and heating - the houses all had holes on the outside weird memory!
Before that we had a gas fire in the living room & upstairs we had a gas bottle thing on four wheels that we would wheel into bathroom for baths and the bedrooms before bed time. We had a linen cupboard with a wierd heater thing in - that did cause a fire as it was very dangerous!

Or not.
She has said she's not old, and on the thread she's started this TAAT about, nobody has claimed to be without any form of heating. Various people have simply talked about it being too expensive to adequately heat their homes, especially at night. (Spoiler: they get accused of lying)

OP, are you actually telling people they are misremembering their own childhood?

She clearly wasn't. Although some posters clearly were misremembering because they couldn't actually identify in their post that they did have some sources of heat, or in one case, it had been pointed out to them in the past that they didn't remember the little electric heater in the lounge that was actually there, and used sometimes.

Oh and I just looked at the link posted by the OP. Dear God does anyone really keep the bedroom at 18 degrees overnight? I NEVER have heating on in the bedroom (or anywhere else) overnight, and I have a bedroom window open except on the coldest of nights. My daytime temperature is set at 16 degrees which may get a temporary uplift on really bitter days. At the temperatures in that article I wouldn't be surprised people can't afford heating - I am far from poor and couldn't afford those costs! And I can definitely tell you for a fact that central heating or not, I don't know anyone who had houses heated to that extent in the "days of old". So maybe we were more resilient!

How did you cook your food?

I much prefer the warmth of a fire than central heating, different type of heat.

Yes they did as a child we had a gas fire in a living room and no heating upstairs that was mid 70sI have lived in a flat in an old Victorian house that had no heating at all

I'm reading this as OP is well-intentioned and trying to avoid a race to the bottom over living standards BUT naive about how historically poor both private rented and social housing stock has been in the UK. More of the examples here seem to come from Scotland which is interesting but there's a consistent theme emerging, many households in the 50s through to at least the 90s especially in rented accommodation were unable to heat the home because fireplaces had been boarded up and central heating not installed and since tenants have few rights in this country there is very little they could do about it. My Mum would tell a similar story, she spent her very early childhood in a Victorian flat that came free with her Mum's work but had NO heating, all the children slept together for warmth. The family of 8 moved when she was 8 to a council house with fireplaces, still no heating upstairs but her chronic bronchitis magically cleared up - this is what the OP means when she says fireplaces downstairs if used do make a difference to warmth and damp. (There are also the occasional owner-occupiers who choose not to install heating or put it on. Possibly due to being property rich and money poor or maybe just stingy.) In any event it is NOT true that in living memory low income households could all heat their homes with fireplaces, bad housing which could not be heated did exist. Where the OP is right is heating a home needs infrastructure and the means to pay gas and electric. The crisis now is caused by not being able to do the latter. Nevertheless standards for socially rented homes are higher today so anyone living in council or housing association housing can heat their home IF they can afford to turn the boiler on. Ironically since the sell off of council housing stock a lot of lower cost private rented sector accommodation is also former social housing so will have central heating too. There will only be a small proportion of unheatable homes out there. However, it's worth looking up infant and child mortality from bronchitis, pneumonia and asthma if you want to see why just putting a jumper on is not a healthy solution and why successive post-war governments spent all that money trying to clear slums in the first place.

Though as @Simonjt says, if you (@CecilyP ) could advise the govt and the rest of the country how an open fireplace or electricity can heat a house if there is no money available to plug a heater in or buy fuel, you could probably be taken on as the Minister of Magic.

My mother in law lived in the same council house all her life with a coal fire in the living room. The council fitted a back boiler and central heating in the 80's but she refused to let them fit radiators upstairs because she thought that being too warm was bad for you.