What was it like growing up in the 50’s/60’s?

[WhyBeDennyDifferent]

I’m feeling a bit nostalgic about my mum and have been pondering what her childhood was like growing up in the 50s/60s in Northern Ireland.
Would anyone care to share their experiences? Even just daft things like what sort of dinners you had, how far you had to walk to school etc. What was expected of you as a child? How did your parents bring you up?

I’m aware everyone’s experiences will vary, I was just looking for a general idea.

Thank you

This is all so familiar to me.

I was born in 1949 and life was simple, and like all of the above posters..all composed and described well with good spelling and grammar.

We were taught to how to write and reply to letters, our handwriting was important. In our school we were taught italic handwriting using fountain pens with italic nibs, ink and everyone had writing sets at home to write letters and thank you letters to friends and relatives. Letters and postcards from holidays were exciting to receive. It was the main form of communication as no one had phones.

A few households had a car but a car coming down the road was rare so we were able to play in the street, use skipping ropes stretching from one pavement to the other, play marbles in the gutters, football games, play on bikes, scooters etc.

At weekends I would do a shop for my mother then I would go to the park and library on my skates, play in my friends house read her Bunty and play with her guinea pigs. I didn't have a TV but a another friend did and we watched Popeye, Robin Hood, the Lone Ranger, Ivanhoe...then re enact them playing 'knights' and cowboys and Indians.

We would play with pea shooters, catapults, and imitation swords, bows and arrows, guns and rifles. In the holidays we would go into the country about 2 miles away [all built up now] for hours on end, taking sandwiches and scrumping apples and pears from trees. No one knew where we were or bothered as long as were home for tea. There were fields full of cowslips, poppies, violets under the hedges.

I went to Brownies and gathered numerous badges for all sorts of skills...semaphore, darning, knitting, lighting a camp fire, reading, tying knots etc .etc. Once a year we would do 'bob-a-job' week where we knocked on doors to ask strangers for jobs to do for a shilling. Some jobs were easy some took ages. Luckily I stayed safe, considering how risky that was.

Christmas meant lighting the candles on the artificial tree, a real fire hazard. I would get quite small presents as weren't that well off, like a loom, an Airfix kit [boat or aeroplane], a paint by numbers picture, a set of paints or crayons, a colouring book, a hard back book [Jennings, Billy Bunter, Heidi, Famous Five, William..] an annual [Dandy, Beano, Rupert Bear..] a sugar pig or mouse, fruit, nuts.

We would sit around a coal fire, the only heating in the whole house and listen to the radio, the Archers, the Goons, Educating Archie, Workers Playtime...

I think my childhood was lovely even if we didn't go away on holiday. We went on day trips on the coach and went to the seaside for the day on the train where I always had egg and chips for dinner followed by a fancy ice cream. Happy days.

No idea how the shops stored the ice cream but we were regularly sent to the kiosk on the corner of the next street to pick up a block of ice cream after Sunday lunch. We trotted home with it wrapped in newspaper.

Smoking was allowed everywhere. DF was a bus freak and used to take me with him at weekends. The buses were invariably filled with smoke which actually made them rather cosy on a cold day The conductors would give us the ends of the rolls from their ticket machines if we happened to be there when they were changing them.

Sunday closing and early Wednesday (after lunch) was the norm.

The school had outside toilets open at bothe ends of the block with hideous hard Izal toilet paper. We'd dare each other to run through the boy's block and they would do likewise through the girl's.

We had heavy gaberdine coats always bought several sizes too big to 'grow into'. Gloves were threaded through the sleeves on elastic so we couldn't lose them.

Shops had a Lyons Maid freezer usually. But our ice cream was from one of the many Italian street ice cream vendors who used to walk or cycle around with a huge tub of it in a presumably insulated container.

OP - you say it sounded tough, but we didn't know any different. That was normal life. I was fed, clothed and had shelter [though also frost patterns on the window every winter morning!] and one thing my parents did was always buy us Clarks' shoes. Otherwise I was mostly in hand-me-downs.

Other posts are bringing back more memories. We had a geezer in the scullery for hot water. My mam warmed an iron on the stove. Wet washing was strung across the street but when the coalman came he'd often drive through it all, leaving it all needing washing again. Coal was tipped down your cellar grate on the street and parents had to go down to the cellar to fetch some for the fire.

I read and read and read and often went to the library several times a week. We loved going to the municipal baths. Girls had a communal changing balcony with a curtain but you could peep through and see the boys on the opposite balcony who had no such luxury as a curtain.

I've just noticed a rather curious thing. I don't think there's hardly a spelling mistake or any incorrect grammar in any of the above posts.

Just saying.

There's clearly a law that states that in a post about spelling or grammar one will always make either a spelling or grammatical mistake. And I did.

So many of the things that are taken for granted these days were seen as luxuries in the 50s and 60s.

We didn't have a telephone when I was a child, but there was a telephone box about half a mile away. Mum wasn't keen on using it though, so it was me who made any urgent calls, like reading out the telegram to my Father at work telling him his father had died.

We didn't have a TV until I was about 14, though we had a radio, and washing was either done by hand or the larger items, sheets for instance, sent to the laundry. Our surname was embroidered on the sheets for the laundry.

Food was seasonal, root vegetables in winter, soft fruit only in summer. Carrots and peas were standards, no aubergine!

When we had our first courgettes, bought in Soho, Mum blanched them, dipped in egg and breadcrumbs and shallow fried them, they were so exotic that we had them as a course on their own, now they are added to everything!
Olive oil was sold in tiny bottles by the chemist for medicinal use.

I had my own household jobs, such as polishing the brass, washing the dinner dishes, laying the coal fire in the mornings before school. From quite a young age I got breakfast and ready for school on my own too.

We had holidays abroad which I loved, and we also ate at restaurants quite often, usually for Sunday lunch.

We always knew Christmas was on the way when DM got the Blue Peter fairy castle down from the loft. Those gold sprayed toilet rolls were wondrous
There weren't shedloads of presents at Christmas. We'd have stockings (one of df's socks) with a few small party bag type presents (the kazoos were a hit with dbro and I but maybe not so much with the 'rents ). I hated girlie dolls but can still remember the absolute bliss I felt when I finally got my long craved Action Man. The Queen was a TV must as was the Top Of The Pops Christmas special where the no. 1 would be revealed.

You asked if I would go back? It is difficult to want to from the standpoint of the present because the position for women was something no one can really even imagine as far as the lack of power goes, and it would seem so uncomfortable and hard day to day by comparison,

But women at least could have children and a home without having to try to do everything. I also think childrens' lives were easier and they did not have to know too much, too young, before they had the emotional capacity to deal with it; or the pressure of being on show and having to be liked the way modern children do with modern technology. People had the time to gradually grow up without the same pressures there are now.

I also think the freedom contraception has brought has been a very good thing and a major reason for women's liberation, but it has also made it possible for there to be an expectation that men have a right to have sex, and led to sex sometimes being separated from any loving feelings for the other person.

One thing about growing up in the 1950s and 1960s we may have forgotten to mention was the threat of nuclear war was always there. The cold war was a fact of life. Half of the old Europe of Anna Karenina, say, was missing. When Cuban missile crisis in happened we actually had to pray in school and people were waiting to see what would happen almost with hearts pounding.

If you could choose, would you live how we live now, or go back to how it was?

As nice as a bit of nostalgia is, would you really want to go back to live in a time when women and other minorities had considerably less rights than they do now? When abortion was illegal and homosexuality punishable by law? When corporal punishment in schools was legal? I certainly wouldn't!

If you could choose, would you live how we live now, or go back to how it was?

For many reasons I wouldn't.
But for some I would....particularly for children whose lives are blighted by the internet and social media.

Another difference was work culture...working class jobs were plentiful in the early sixties and a big surge in middle class careers from the fifties onwards propelled social mobility .
But reading other threads here about the insane and long working culture in professions such as teaching and law I wonder how my fathers generation got anything done ! He worked for Shell abroad and later at Shell Centre in London which had bars and restaurants and where drinking from mid day was quite the norm and was seen as a perfectly civilised way to exist . Mind you he and his colleagues had all fought in the war and had a mix of duty and orderliness coupled with an irreverence for the rules...they just wouldn't survive in todays ultra serious and self important corporate culture.

for children whose lives are blighted by the internet and social media.

You'd probably find that their lives were blighted in other ways back then. Look at the stuff Jimmy Savile and Co got away with. Not saying it doesn't happen today, but I think it as prolific in the past. It just wasn't talked about as much.

As nice as a bit of nostalgia is, would you really want to go back to live in a time when women and other minorities had considerably less rights than they do now? When abortion was illegal and homosexuality punishable by law? When corporal punishment in schools was legal? I certainly wouldn't!
Picking up on the corporal punishment thing. People were hit by the belt in my Scottish school. But it wasn't taken very seriously. Honestly. I wouldn't want to return to some of the things that you've mentioned.

If I would go back to the 50's/60's way of life? Yes I would. I live in a 1950's house funnily enough, and am sitting by a real fire like I used to...not by an open fire place but a log burner. And as I ate in the past I cook fresh food every day...but now including Italian/French/Mexican/Chinese/Indian recipes.

In the 1960's I would go to the cinema on Saturday mornings. One of first films I saw was Summer Holiday starring Cliff Richard. Pop music was taking hold...Lonnie Donegan, Buddy Holly, Eddie Cochran, Elvis, Billy Fury, Adam Faith, Marty Wilde, Bobby Vee, Joe Brown were familiar names. But when the Beatles and Rolling Stones came along everything ramped up as groups emerged from every city and it was such an exciting time. Fashions were changing, mods and rockers took over from teddy boys, teenagers had money and were buying clothes and records every weekend.

We had groups playing in the local hall every week...the Hollies, Manfred Mann, the Animals, Steam Packet [Long John Baldry, Julie Driscoll, Rod Stewart], Yardbirds, Herman's Hermits, the Who, The Merseybeats, Georgie Fame, Chris Farlow. It was amazing.

I was a mod. I wore a suede coat and hush puppies and met up with others in the town centre every Saturday when we would then gate crash a party or go to a venue to hear and dance to music around our handbags. If I was lucky I'd get a lift on the back of a Vespa or Lambretta with a boy wearing the obligatory green fur hooded Parka.

In the concert hall we would go and see stars like Chuck Berry, Ike and Tina Turner, Gene Pitney, The Beatles [couldn't hear them for the screaming], The Stones. We would have a Wimpy in the Wimpy bar and then a scrumpy cider in a pub before going in. We were under age but got served ok!

Great times to be a teenager.

Look at the stuff Jimmy Savile and Co got away with he was an evil man that very few of us met. Life really was more innocent then.

He was, but there were plenty of evil men operating on a smaller scale too. The amount of stories I've heard about so-and-so who was a dirty old man and all the girls were warned to avoid him etc.

Born in ‘57 and yes, yes and yes to everything so far.

Trying to remember when we got a telly and I distinctly remember watching ‘Watch With Mother’ (Rag, Tag and Bobtail, Camberwick Green, Andy Pandy, Bill and Ben etc - anyone?). I also remember the house we lived in (dad was in the army and we moved around a lot!). So it would have been 60/61. We never had a telephone, ever, until the nineties, way after we’d all left home, but we always had a car, a tv and a washing machine. Every time we moved they were all organised within a week. One thing about the tv (always rented) was, as well as only having the three channels was the fact programmes were only broadcast from (say) noon to 1.30 pm and again from 3.30 pm until 10.30 pm - made bedtime very easy!

We also had country/scottish dancing at school and on nice days the teacher would suddenly announce we were going on a nature walk so off we’d go. No health and safety, no permission slips to be signed, it was great

I definitely wouldn’t want to go back to the way the law was back then or the little rights women had, but I do wish we could claim back some of the values. I often feel like we want too much.

The hand writing and sending letters is funny. I found a letter in my mums stuff from her dad. It was so formal and mundane, mentioning things like how much her mum had paid for some meat etc. It obviously meant a lot to her as she’d kept it for so many years but to me it seemed so underwhelming.

As a child I’d like to go back to that time. In fact As an adult I might like to too. ProbBly as I’m older and don’t have such an urge to travel. Cars were fewer, less comfortable and driving 40 mins to the shore was a long trip.
Watching peter rabbit on iPlayer reminds me of then, hand knitted cardies (Mrs rabbit) and the roadsmen who did the local roads dressed like tommy brick!

As well as 'Back in Time for Tea', Call the Midwife, on at the moment, will give you little snippets of things in the sixties.

And there were no homosexuals apart from a few MPs so no problems there !!

Life really was more innocent then. it really wasn't - there were more teachers/youth leaders/choir masters (etc) who 'took advantage' than now as proper checks stop them. I came across some - you knew about them by word of mouth and tried to stay clear. A certain amount of 'handiness' or physical punishment was par for the course. If you complained, you'd be told you must have deserved it.

Born 1956, grew up with TV, gas fridge and a car - but no heating, I remember frost on the inside of my bedroom window and having to light the coal fire (when I was at primary) on winter mornings.

Had old valve radios in my bedroom from about 9 years old, listened to the pirate stations in the North Sea - pop music was our world, closed to our parents. Can still remember the excitement of a new Beatles or Stones single.

Travelled on steam trains and trolleybuses (in London) - my mother stopped working as soon as she was pregnant and didn't go back until my youngest brother was at junior school (when she did a mature student course & got a degree, against my father's wishes - although he helped with the printing of her dissertation & was proud with her First).

Remember getting Neapolitan ice-cream from the corner shop, taking empties back to the pub off-licence for the deposit, walking (then riding a bike) to primary on my own, my elderly great-aunt, who never recovered from losing her fiance in Flanders, having only an outside toilet which had to have a hurricane lantern in it to prevent it freezing in the winter.

Would I rather live then? No way. Life is so much better and move comfortable now - and fairer in so many ways. Not fair enough, but so much better.

I've got some old family letters, one from my Grandmother to my Mother, written on the day that Antwerp was liberated, telling how the German troops had "scuttled away" during the night, a real bit of family history.

no takeaways, except fish and chips. Burger places were grim, I can remember a wimpeys but it was a grey burger in a flabby bun, no salads or relish, the most exotic thing there was ketchup in a,plastic tomato. Pizza unheard of, horrible rumours about Indian restaurants which were seen as very exotic and were expected to serve a range of English food as well as Indian food. Fried chicken shops didn't exist, chicken was a huge treat for a special Sunday. Thai food, Mexican, Greek food, Chinese food , Italian food, all unheard of in most places in the UK . If you had told anyone that people would happily buy sushi in a supermarket you would have been laughed out of town.

Spaghetti came chopped up into little pieces in tomato sauce in tins and smelled of sick. The only pasta I can remember was macaroni. Bread was English bread, even French sticks were unheard of, sliced bread was about as exciting as bread got, most people preferred unsliced (my mum sliced bread beautifully). Eggs were much nicer, except you quite often got bad ones, which is why people of a certain age automatically break eggs separately in a bowl when making cakes!

I can remember when flash cleaner came out. They gave away quite generous packets as free samples. I tried it out on my mums kitchen wall,much to her annoyance it worked really well, so she had to clean the whole wall to disguise the clean patch I had made.