Wokery gone mad

Strange as it seems now many people who grew up with the Loo out the back felt that was the best place for them and having one inside was unhygienic, of course many were once only a bucket rather than a flush toilet so keeping a smelly bucket of waste out of the house was probably the better option . I was surprised to find that when I moved to Hampshire in the early 1970’s to see an advert by Winchester Council a City that is generally considered to be quite affluent for a night soil collector. They still had some properties where the toilets were still the bucket type and the waste was collected every morning.

GH

In message snipped-for-privacy@mid.individual.net>, Marland snipped-for-privacy@btinternet.co.uk> writes

Sounds a bit like one of the schools I went to (late 60s). It was built as (but no longer run as) a church school, and had a similar style to a church. The main rooms were all double height (with the windows high to prevent distractions), and ours had a cast iron coal/coke (I forget) stove in a wire mesh cage to stop pupils getting burnt. Handy for drying out gloves etc. in the winter. That place was built in 1818 and closed then demolished sometime in the 1990s.

No school uniform in those days, and sitting in lessons wearing a coat and gloves (if dry) was considered normal. Imagine the outcry if you suggested that today.

Adrian

My grandparents' house had a lean-to toilet (with a high cast iron cistern) adjacent to the (ground floor) bathroom. I suppose it could be considered to be "on the way" to being an indoor toilet. The toilet had two doors; one into the bathroom and the other to the garden, so, in theory, it would be possible to use it from the garden without entering the house. In practise this didn't work as it would be necessary to lock and unlock both doors every time the toilet was used.

The bathroom was so cramped that the foot of the bath went under the sink of the adjacent scullery.

Amazing story that Marland:)..

JOOI who paid for war damage repairs was it the house owner or the government at the time anyone know?..

Over at old grans house in Duxford, yep that one:) they had an outside privy the bucket was emptied into trenches in the garden and veg were grown on that there was a photo of some marrow's grown there must have been four foot odd long!..

That garden fed the family of three couples who had to share the place back in the wartime days and after!

A 'Summer weight' 2.5 tog duvet is a useful addition. We have 9 and 4.5 tog duvets, but we have never needed to use them both together - this in an unheated bedroom.

A technician I once worked with never heated his house at all. It was a mid-terrace house, and he relied on conducted heat from the houses on either side.

AFAIK the government paid for repairs to make homes habitable if possible but by the necessity of wartime limits on materials they could be quite basic. The once fairly ornate plaster ceilings remained cracked for years. I don’t know what happened if the house had to demolished and rebuilt, Gran was lucky in away as her house was deemed repairable as was the adjoining semi but beyond that the houses were destroyed completely. You can see the change between original and reconstruction by the plainer style of the latter on streetview

and some properties were replaced by council flats. Some people were still in prefabs on the parkland around the railway until the 1960’s.

Oh and they came and took all the railings aways , you can still see where they got cut off,a scenario repeated all over the country.

GH

GH

The 3-bed semis on my estate had baxi bermuda back boilers with class 2 flue blocks heading up through the bedroom above which allowed the 'architect' to specify a much smaller radiator compared the similar sized bedroom on the south side of the houses.

For me, the heat from the flue blocks plus the 28mm gravity primary HW circuit was enough to keep the bedroom warm.

Yes, my great-grandmother's street (terraced houses) had all the cast iron railings removed. The adjacent street received one bomb and several houses were demolished. They were replaced post war with a couple of new police houses. They llok as though they've been sold now.

Google Street View (adjacent street):

Putting a top sheet on is much easier than putting on a duvet cover. A trick, I saw used in an hotel, which I now use is use a top sheet with a duvet, saves changing the duvet cover as often.

When you cooked over the kitchen range, if the sweep was coming you used teh bedroom fireplace for cooking.

You don't put the duvet cover on every day, just when the bedding is changed. Tidying a duvet-bed is a lot quicker than one with a top sheet and blankets.

I remember the prefabs.

...and threw them away as the metal wasn't suitable for the "war effort".

I remember the disfigurements.

Ah, but you have to *know* how to put a duvet cover on. First, turn the cover inside out...

Still clearly visible in many places. What was needed for the war effort was steel, with its low carbon content, with typically less than say 0.5% carbon. Much of what was collected was cast iron, with say 3-4% carbon. But cast iron has a lower melting point than steel (say 1200°C, compared with 1400-1500°C for steel). As a result, small local foundries found it easier and cheaper to make items with cast iron, such as cooking pots, cooking stoves and cast iron railings, rather than with steel.

But the men who went around collecting the stuff 'for the war effort', either weren't told not to collect cast iron, or weren't told how to distinguish it from steel, so collected both. Although cast iron can be converted to steel, it was simpler just to put it to one side until the supply of scrap steel dried up.

There was also a political angle, to involve the whole country and make everyone feel part of the war effort and that they were 'doing their bit'.

We had those in the classrooms in outbuildings during '70s, they glowed cherry red, people regularly scuffed their rubber-soled shoes on them, leaving huge black marks.

I was trying to make a rough comparison of that to the affordability of a starter house nowadays, ignoring today's much higher build quality.

In 1985, I remember it was pretty damn tough financially buying my first house.

There certainly wasn't anything like today's "essentials", such as smartphone, wifi, dishwasher, fridge freezer, avocado toast, etc. For the first year with a mortgage, I barely had enough spare money to buy food. Never a meal out, fancy coffees or takeaways. (Bah humbug!)

Youngsters today complain that it was easy for Boomers (born roughly between 1946 to 1964, some say 1960 to 1969) to afford to buy a house but it's allegedly impossible today.

How about ornamental fences with curly bits known as "wrought iron"? Is that OK, or is it really some kind of steel?