Wartime recipes, substitutions and other related austerity hints

Suffolksue

Sure I typed Monna ,!

CapricornLass

' ...only to discover that her parent's home didn't have electricity and water had to be carried from a tap in the yard!'

My mother went to pick up one of my sisters who had gone to a friend's house to play ..  She lived in an old thatched farmhouse, and walking in, Mum discovered that the main room still had its beaten earth floor.  This was the late sixties.

Helebore

Yes, my friend's over the road from me, in the early 60s had also a beaten earth floor. Not sure if they had electric either, cannot really remember! This was in Herefordshire! They also had a toilet that got moved when full up, can't think what it's called. I loved it, if I went missing that was where I was as I had just learned to read and they used cut up comics and newspapers instead of loo roll, so I would sit in this stinky place reading! 

ailz95

Eenymeeny said:

Can I share a story told to me by an elderly gentleman a couple of days ago? He said he was courting a young lady (who he later married) and didn't know what to buy her for her birthday. His mother suggested a hairdryer as they were a pretty new invention at the time and she thought that the young lady would be thrilled with the gift. He proudly presented the gift to her, only to discover that her parent's home didn't have electricity and water had to be carried from a tap in the yard!
 I'm guessing that this would have been in the '40s and having modern conveniences in the council house where they lived he hadn't thought that people still lived like that! 

My parents married in 1949.  They lived in a 2 up 2 down in a slum area in North Manchester.  They bought a railway carriage shell and had it dropped over the yard wall.  This gave them a scullery and the outside toilet was almost inside.  My mum was frightened of the dark and this meant my dad didn't have to stand outside every night when she went to the loo.  I remember having a bath in front of the fire in a tin bath - I don't know how the water was heated.  When we moved to a house with an inside toilet - and later a bathroom it was amazing.

Primrose

When we consider today's centrally heated bathrooms and toilets, we forget how primitive life was for many during the war and the post austerity years afterwards.   One of my tasks as a small child was to help my grandmother cut up newspaper squares and string them up for loo paper in the outside toilet.  It did have a cistern but the water often froze in it in winter, so you would have to "perform" in a bucket which was then emptied into a big hole in the garden where all the other vegetable peelings were composted.   Nobody ever seemed to be ill or catch infections as a result of these arrangements.   They probably all developed stronger immune systems as a result !   That dreadful brown shiny IZAL crackly toilet paper was actually deemed an improvement over newspaper.  You were "posh" if you used that!

Brambling

My parents raised my eldest siblings in what is now a very pretty 'chocolate box' thatched cottage in a small Dorset village, from just after the war until the mid 60s.  My dad was a farm labour and it was a tied cottage.  They can remember when there was a  well in the garden for water and how excited they were when the cold water tap was installed in the scullery and ten years later the one electric light fitted in the kitchen which you could remove the bulb and connect an electric iron, this was the only electric in the cottage.

There was still no bathroom when we moved out in the mid 60s just a outside toilet down the garden I was a baby when we moved and have no memory of this, but it seems my dad would use some of the contents from it on the allotment and veg patch and the 'violet man' would come to empty the rest  

When my older siblings get together and reminisce they talk of four of them catching the farms shire horse and riding him bareback in the fields, skating on the village pond until the ice cracked under my 'chubby' sister, 60 years later my brother still teases her.  They bred rabbits for pocket money and were responsible for taking the goat to the common, looking after the chickens and helping in the vegetable garden.  The children next door were too common to play with because they had newspaper on the table for a table cloth and kept ferrets in the kitchen  (their dad was a poacher!)  my eldest sister would sneak in to play and was friends with one of the girls for 70 years, another sister was friends with the vicars' daughter because they had a indoor bathroom and she had lots of toys.

Life was hard for them and my mother never allowed anyone to forget that she had 'married down', we were also brought up poor but as we are reminded we had a bathroom, electricity and didn't have to walk two miles to the bus stop 

monnagran

My parents married before the war and actually bought their own bungalow, almost unheard of for a young working class couple in those days.  They did it by paying their parents for their keep and, apart from church collection, did not spend another penny for the two years that they were engaged.  They managed to save up £50 each, that was 10 shillings a week, (50p, for you youngsters).  Dad put his £50 down as a deposit on a new bungalow and Mum furnished it with her £50 and paid for their wedding reception.  They were considered very fortunate, but when you are in your very early twenties, 2 years of never going out, buying new clothes or even taking the bus if they could walk must have been very hard.
The bungalow had all mod cons for the 30s, electricity, an Ascot water heater that lit with a bang when you turned a hot water tap on, a bathroom and one of those cupboards with a glass fronted top half and a shelf that pulled out to make a working surface, in the titchy little kitchenette.
It also had a big garden.
My aunt then bought the bungalow next door and they took down the fence between the gardens which gave us a big garden.  Very useful during the war when we grew all our own fruit and vegetables and kept chickens in one corner.

The bungalows were on a hill, so they had quite largish cellars underneath.  This is where we kept the coal and also served as air raid shelters.  I remember very clearly being taken down to sleep next to the coal heap if the raid was deemed too bad for the Morrison shelter indoors.
One Christmas Eve there was an air raid warning and we decamped to the cellar taking my Christmas stocking with us.  During the night a mouse nibbled right through my stocking and right through the small bar of chocolate that Mum had queued for 2 hours to get for me.  She was so upset over this that she and auntie cut the unnibbled bits of chocolate away so that I at least had a taste of chocolate on Christmas Day.

And that's enough of that for one day.

Suffolksue

More please Monna !

PipneyJane

monnagran said:

My parents married before the war and actually bought their own bungalow, almost unheard of for a young working class couple in those days.  They did it by paying their parents for their keep and, apart from church collection, did not spend another penny for the two years that they were engaged.  They managed to save up £50 each, that was 10 shillings a week, (50p, for you youngsters).  Dad put his £50 down as a deposit on a new bungalow and Mum furnished it with her £50 and paid for their wedding reception.  They were considered very fortunate, but when you are in your very early twenties, 2 years of never going out, buying new clothes or even taking the bus if they could walk must have been very hard.
The bungalow had all mod cons for the 30s, electricity, an Ascot water heater that lit with a bang when you turned a hot water tap on, a bathroom and one of those cupboards with a glass fronted top half and a shelf that pulled out to make a working surface, in the titchy little kitchenette.
It also had a big garden.
My aunt then bought the bungalow next door and they took down the fence between the gardens which gave us a big garden.  Very useful during the war when we grew all our own fruit and vegetables and kept chickens in one corner.

The bungalows were on a hill, so they had quite largish cellars underneath.  This is where we kept the coal and also served as air raid shelters.  I remember very clearly being taken down to sleep next to the coal heap if the raid was deemed too bad for the Morrison shelter indoors.
One Christmas Eve there was an air raid warning and we decamped to the cellar taking my Christmas stocking with us.  During the night a mouse nibbled right through my stocking and right through the small bar of chocolate that Mum had queued for 2 hours to get for me.  She was so upset over this that she and auntie cut the unnibbled bits of chocolate away so that I at least had a taste of chocolate on Christmas Day.

And that's enough of that for one day.

That is a lovely memory. Thank you for sharing.

- Pip

roblou27

Hi all, just discovered this thread, wonderful and is bringing back so many memories. I was born in 62 and we had no heating other than a coal fire or Rayburn in the living room in a freezing cold council house. We lived in a brick one until I was 6 then we moved to an Airey house. Don't know whether anyone can picture these houses. They were clad with huge slabs of pebble dash concrete and were Airey by name and nature. The metal window frames never shut properly so there was always a draught. I can remember we had a parafin heater on the landing which one day caught fire. Thank goodness it was discovered quickly. Our beds had a flanalette sheet, 3 blankets one being a cellular blanket..I think they had a different name back then. An eiderdown on top of that then a candlewick bedspread. With all that, a teddy shaped hottie and winceyette pyjamas we were toastie. But you could hardly move as it was so heavy. 
My Mum was a home help and used to take me in the school holidays. I remember my Mum going regularly to one elderly couple who I loved because the alwAys gave me a quarter of dolly mixtures. They lived in a two up two two down terraced house with no bathroom and only a cold tap in the kitchen. They had no fridge and kept white enamel buckets in their pantry, that they put the milk in to keep fresh. Any meat or cheese was put on the concrete shelf.  On Mondays they used to do the washing in a copper with a mangle on the top. I was fascinated as my Mum and this elderly lady would disappear in a cloud of clean smelling steam. She was a dear soul who wore her grey  hair up in a bun, wore a crossover pinny and thick grey stockings. So many memories of when I was small, thank you for instigating that trip down memory lane.