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Could this be your family...????

Astoness

Astoness

TRUE BRUMMIE MODERATOR
Staff member
hi folks...i just had to post this pic as its so typical of the times...its thought to be taken in the 50s ...but who are the family... i found this in an old bygone paper but they have no knoweledge of who the family is....they have a tv and it looks like the lady on the left maybe holding a telephone..and just look at the washing drying above the open fire...sure takes me back a few years....

sorry if its been posted before but i cant recall it....

lyn:)
 
Lyn that takes me back could be us but it,s not we even had one of those clothes dries over the fire it was on pulley wheels so you could lower it down perhaps someone will remind me what they were called i,ve forgotten. Dek
 
evening dek...yes i remember now that you could lower the clothes drier down...cant for the life of me recall the name for them though...

lyn
 
I think of those times when people sat so close to the fire it made their legs look so red and raw.
Nice Photograph Lyn.
 
good evening ernie...crikey thats just reminded me of when i used to stand in front of the fire guard to get warm..it was one of those that went all the way round the fire...when our mom eventually got through to me and i moved away from it i had the little square inprints on the back of my legs from the guard...lol....took days for them to fade...

lyn
 
Lyn, it looks like one of those spot the danger photo's and the girl sitting by the fire will get cornd beef legs.
 
too right froth...we had no heating in the bedrooms or attic...no wall to wall carpet..just lino and maybe a small rug and plenty of drafts from rotton window frames...but we were happy enough:)


lyn
 
You might 'ave bin 'appy Lyn - I was bl**dy cold with the frost on the inside of the bedroom windows (and the mice scrabbling under the bed).
 
My mom used to say she's got corned beef legs,idle sod's been sat with her knees up the chimney all day.:rolleyes:
 
hi charlie...:) yer right enough about the cold...lord knows how many blankets we piled onto the beds in the winter...we didnt have many probs with mice as we always had cats....

lyn
 
Blankets...you had BLANKETS? Blimey...how the other half lived eh?
And the mice ate our cats #sob#.
 
We had an airer like in the photo, and my bedroom was so cold, I used to plug a one bar electric fire into the light socket, and put it in the bed holding the sheets etc up like a tent until my bed was nice and warm. If any youngsters read this, electric blankets are safer....:D
 
Ray a lady in our road had what my mom called pickle cabbage legs. I was always told never to sit too close to the fire for fear I would end up the same. Jean.
 
Astoness said:
hi charlie...:) yer right enough about the cold...lord knows how many blankets we piled onto the beds in the winter...we didnt have many probs with mice as we always had cats....

lyn
Click to expand...

WE didn't have many extra blankets in our house. It was coats put on top of the blankets and a hot house brick wrapped in a towel:rolleyes:
 
oldmohawk..your memories made me smile...but as they say...where theres a will theres a way....

lyn
 
There is some real posh folk on this forum...blankets, hot water bottles and electricity.And that fireplace looks like extreme wealth to me,our's was the kind I had to black lead every week.:(
 
i hasten to add that our blankets were of the itchy type:cry: thank god for duvets:)
 
Freezing cold, all huddled round the fire in the scullery - none of the rest of the house was heated. AND WORST OF ALL an outside lav!!!!! You didn't linger in there believe me!

The family in the picture must have been really posh to have a phone - mine didn't get one till the mid 60s.

And those uppy downy washing line thingys were called 'Sheila Maids'.
 
this is turning into a most interesting thread..its great to read everyones memories...

seabird...thank you for telling us the clothes dryers were called sheila maids....thats something else ive learnt...

lyn
 
our clothes airer pulley thing was in the kitchen not the living room. we also only had coats over the bed and i had to share with 2 of my brothers. my younger brother used to wet the bed so i would go in to mom in the middle of the night and she would get up and put a piece of rag over the wet patch till it could be sorted in the morning!
 
I was born in 1952 in a house that had an inside tiolet, a large range in the livingroom and gas fires in the bedrooms there was no hot running water,(bet you all feel sorry for me ) The water for the bath was heated in a large gas boiler and carried into the bathroom in saucepans. The only draw back was we never had enough money for coal for the range fire , never had 6d for the gas meter for the fires in the bedrooms. So i was just as bl***ing cold as the rest of ya.
 
Hello Lyn, I have tried several times to post but lost them, hope I get it right this time.
I guess you were in fashion with those burnt pattered legs, forgive me as I could not resist it. That looks an old yet at the same time a modern photograph with the TV and more so the telephone. I used to go around to a mate’s house and they had one of those clothes dryers. We used to sit and watch Educating Archie, the TV Toppers and a program I think was called S.O.E. about the American Secret Service similar to our SAS if I am correct. That fire guard we used to call “ the bow “ I wonder if anyone else ever used that name for it ?
 
I used to get a shilling a week pocket money, and my dad,bless him, tried to teach me the value of money and made me save sixpence a week into a box. I was sixteen when I found out it was the gas meter:cry:

Terry
 
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