Navy blues with hanky pocket, happy days 
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I used to love staying with my Auntie in Winter because she would always put a metal hot water bottle at the bottom of the bed to keep my feet warm. My Auntie wrapped the bottle up inside a thick flannelette pillowcase to stop it burning me - and it stayed warm all night.
If I remember rightly, it looked a bit like this
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My childhood home was on the coast so we got howling winds straight off the North Sea. It was a well built, roomy council house but so cold in winter.
We had a fire in the kitchen and also the lounge and one of the 3 bedrooms had a fireplace. There was no central heating.
The kitchen fire was always lit but the lounge not until evening and the bedroom one only if one of us was ill. I loved that - laying in bed watching the flames dance feeling all warm and cozy. Mum was very good at home nursing and used to bring up cold drinks and hot soups.
Mum used to bank up the fire at night in the kitchen and hang our school clothes around it to warm up for the morning. Like most people experienced back then, there was ice inside the windows and I used to look out and watch my Mum dressed up in boots and coats like an Eskimo fighting with the wind to peg our clothes on the line.
Mum was a wonderful cook so we always had good hearty food and she could make meals from anything. My poor Dad used to have to cycle on an old 3 speed bike a 12 mile round trip to work every day along a coast road with no protection from the North winds, just open roads and fields. In the depths of winter he did it in the dark. Whatever the weather he had to do it and if his clothes got wet they stayed that way all day.
I donât think I really appreciated just how hard my parents worked to keep us well fed and warm but I really do now. I have driven the route my Dad cycled many times, including deep snow and howling wind and thatâs no fun, let alone being on an old bike.
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Thank you for sharing those heart-warming memories, Rose - your childhood home and the way your parents looked after you sound idyllic to me, compared to my childhood memories of being constantly hungry and cold every Winter.
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Ice inside windows was very common. I was about 4 when we moved to a new house, also on the north east coast. Incredibly for a 60âs built house in the cold UK it only had single glazing. This was, as I found out later, at a time when Scandinavia had already moved onto triple glazing. So a couple of cold winters, not just ice on the inside of the window from the condensation but also a frozen layer in the toilet.
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Yes, the one I used to use was similar but more bottle shaped. It used to be wrapped in something too as it was seriously hot. I also used to be impressed that it was still warm in the morning. I bet youâd be able to source those vintage hot water bottles from somewhere but I wouldnât feel safe or confident with using one these days.
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Sorry to hear that Boot. We were cold as you had to sit almost on top of the fire to feel the heat. Hard luck if the only free chair was towards the back of the room.
We had a downstairs toilet which was freezing as it was in what we called âthe wash houseâ. Every winter the pipes would freeze up even though my Dad wrapped them in sacking. My bedroom was tiny with pink lino and faced north so was really cold. My Mum bought a furry rug at a jumble sale and it went beside my bed and I felt like I had gone to heaven!
Our childhood would have been very impoverished if my parents had wasted money on cigarettes, alcohol etc but they did neither and made a little go a long way. We never went hungry because Mum worked to a strict budget and Dad grew all our veg, salad etc.
His childhood was really poor and he used to tell us how they always went to bed hungry and they would cry themselves to sleep so he didnât want that for us. So sorry you had to go through that.
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My Gran had hot water bottles made from china rather than metal. A domed affair
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Reading all your stories makes me so grateful for my comfortable life now . Iâm so lucky to have a warm little house and my pension to live on , paid weekly into my bank , I always say , until the day I die . Our parents really struggled and life must have been so harsh, it certainly was for my mum . Apparently my grandma took in washing and did it by hand. There is a lot to be said for modern life .
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My parents were fortunate to get a council flat when they were OAPâs.The first time theyâd experienced the comfort of central heating.
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I have Swedish relatives and I visited them a dozen years ago. Their houses and flats were built with the climate in mind, even the letter boxes were designed to stop heat escaping with two spring loaded insulated flaps.
They took central heating to a whole new level with all the houses heated by steam or water (forget which) which arrived via a network of insulated pipes to each dwelling from a central source.
After growing up in the UK in a Victorian house with outside plumbing I was very impressed. So much so that I even took a picture of the insulated pipes being installed.
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OkayâŠI confess, southern softy here has just put the heating on for a quick blast to warm up the flat first thing 
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This approach is common in northern Europe and only beginning to appear in the UK. It is by a considerable margin the most efficient means of heating houses. Each house is still metered and billed - so its not like the old Soviet heating of apartment blocks where people had to open windows to cool down and cost was not considered. The pipes are double insulated and buried in the ground so the heat loss from source to dwelling is low.
I understand some new apartment blocks in the UK have the same approach.
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My grandmother took in washing too! My Dad told me the main actor from Much Binding in the Marsh (bet nobody remembers that radio prog) had a holiday cottage near them. She did his washing and charged 2/6 a load. Dad had to help carry the basket.
Further back, her mother is described as a Pauper/Washerwoman on the census.
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My daughter lived in a flat in a group of four 18 story apartment blocks in Aberdeen and all were heated from a central source. They were right next to the sea and when the wind blows it gets pretty cold there.
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I most certainly do and I can remember the stars - Richard Murdoch and Kenneth Horne, they both went on to other radio shows like Beyond our Ken and Round the Horne as I recall.
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And The Men from the Ministry. All good stuff. 
It was Richard Murdoch who stayed in the village and my granny did the washing for him and his friends. Thanks for that. 
My grandparents had one of these âŠ
Lift the lid, put in some hot coals from the fire, push it down between the sheets move it around a bit, remove before getting into bed.
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Crikey how old were they ?
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