So yes, did you know that for most UK households, central heating didn’t become the norm until the late 1970s? Many of us grew up in cold bedrooms and homes where keeping warm in winter was a yearly challenge.
This morning was cold. I looked out of the window and noticed that every roof was covered in ice. Cars and the pavements were iced over as well. And, officially, winter hasn’t begun yet.
At least today, we have central heating to keep out the cold.
If you grew up in a British home before the late 1970s, you’ll know that heating the house — the whole house — was being optimistic. Heating a room, usually a single room, was a more accurate description of family life.
The idea that every room could be warmed at the turn of a thermostat belonged firmly to the future. If you were well-off, or posh, maybe you could afford it, but there was no one like that in my neighbourhood. Futuristic TV adverts and the pages of the Ideal Home magazine promised a better future, but for most of us, central heating was an exotic luxury, like a colour TV or crisps in flavours other than ready salted.
The typical UK home of the 60s and 70s was built around the living room fire. It was king. King Coal, in fact. That single fire was expected to heat the entire family and, if you were lucky, most of the downstairs. Bedrooms? Bathrooms (if you had one)? The landing? Those were places you dashed through at speed, wrapped in a dressing gown, determined to complete your journey before frostbite set in.
Condensation wasn’t a minor annoyance — it ran down single-glazed windows like a miniature waterfall, creating small black mould that everyone pretended not to notice. This was long before the days of double glazing, and insulation in houses was, well, what was insulation? In winter, ice on the inside of windows wasn’t unusual. Your bedroom felt less like a domestic space and more like a poorly insulated Arctic outpost.
An icebox.