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Things that used to be common place in people’s homes

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najaB

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I'm seriously considering getting one for myself as occasionally I can't manage a hand-held one.
They're also much harder to misplace. If it's not on the wall then you're in the wrong house!
 
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MattA7

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Is that rare nowadays?

unfortunately not, a considerable number of homes (even newer ones) still have such dreadful setup. Unique to the UK apparently.

one thing that is quite rare is the old high level toilet cisterns with the flush chain often made from a black material the same as the old black toilet seats. Always wonders what they were actually made of as it was plastic or metal.
 

Peter Sarf

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unfortunately not, a considerable number of homes (even newer ones) still have such dreadful setup. Unique to the UK apparently.

one thing that is quite rare is the old high level toilet cisterns with the flush chain often made from a black material the same as the old black toilet seats. Always wonders what they were actually made of as it was plastic or metal.
A separate hot tap and cold tap in the kitchen would be very useful if you want a drink of cold water while the missus is drawing hot water. I suppose that because we have a downstairs bath room I really should go there. Makes me think - new houses are always blessed with an upstairs bathroom and loo.
 

py_megapixel

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unfortunately not, a considerable number of homes (even newer ones) still have such dreadful setup. Unique to the UK apparently.
On the contrary, I hate mixer taps. If you want cold water and hot was used previously, you have to waste water by waiting for the hot to run through
 

Peter Sarf

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Servants.
And slaves.
I doubt they were ever that common, given that the servant/served ratio would have been greater than 1:1.
Yes. My family never had a servant or a slave as far as I know. In fact the vast majority of families in the UK did not have servants or slaves as they were not rich enough to have someone else do their chores for them.

My grandparents did move to a house that must have had a servant or two before their time.

As for things that have gone :-

Coal bunker.
Metal refuse bin.
Wooden window frames.
Fireplaces (though now quite fashionable).
Pantry.
Various things made of wood and/or metal that are now replaced by irreparable plastic.

Apologies if some/all of these have been mentioned already - I probably read them but I claim brain failure.
 

Busaholic

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And slaves.

Yes. My family never had a servant or a slave as far as I know. In fact the vast majority of families in the UK did not have servants or slaves as they were not rich enough to have someone else do their chores for them.

My grandparents did move to a house that must have had a servant or two before their time.

As for things that have gone :-

Coal bunker.
Metal refuse bin.
Wooden window frames.
Fireplaces (though now quite fashionable).
Pantry.
Various things made of wood and/or metal that are now replaced by irreparable plastic.

Apologies if some/all of these have been mentioned already - I probably read them but I claim brain failure.
My grandparents had a servant, Annie, well into the 1960s, by which time she'd have been in her seventies, and my grandparents into their 80s and, in my grandfather's case, almost 90. My grandfather had left school at 14 and worked for the Inland Revenue until (reluctantly) retiring at the age 0f 80. They were never rich, but exceedingly frugal. Annie's main job was getting a week's meals out of the Sunday joint of lamb!

We lived in an inter-war (barely) semi in S.E.London which had working bells in all the rooms with the 'nerve centre' in the kitchen/pantry where they rang, the number 'flag' for each room indicating the location! We had a coal bunker that had masqueraded as a shelter during WW2, and a dilapidated small summer house in the back garden.
 

Peter Sarf

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My grandparents had a servant, Annie, well into the 1960s, by which time she'd have been in her seventies, and my grandparents into their 80s and, in my grandfather's case, almost 90. My grandfather had left school at 14 and worked for the Inland Revenue until (reluctantly) retiring at the age 0f 80. They were never rich, but exceedingly frugal. Annie's main job was getting a week's meals out of the Sunday joint of lamb!

We lived in an inter-war (barely) semi in S.E.London which had working bells in all the rooms with the 'nerve centre' in the kitchen/pantry where they rang, the number 'flag' for each room indicating the location! We had a coal bunker that had masqueraded as a shelter during WW2, and a dilapidated small summer house in the back garden.
Yes it was the layout of the kitchen and adjoining room plus the bells that gave it away.
 

MattA7

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Separate hot+cold taps are a problem because it means you need to choose between scalding yourself or freezing yourself when you need to wash your hands.
 

Puffing Devil

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As for things that have gone :-

Coal bunker.
Metal refuse bin.
Wooden window frames.
Fireplaces (though now quite fashionable).
Pantry.
Various things made of wood and/or metal that are now replaced by irreparable plastic.

We have wooden windows and room with a fireplace. We also have a Pantry.
 

Devonian

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old high level cisterns with the flush chain often made from a black material the same as the old black seats. Always wonders what they were actually made of as it was plastic or metal.
It was a plastic. Well, usually a plastic/sawdust composite.
Other fibres too: including asbestos. Best not to smash them up if you are removing them!
Separate hot+cold taps are a problem because it means you need to choose between scalding yourself or freezing yourself when you need to wash your hands.
This is why British basins have plugs, and basins abroad frequently don't. As Britain basically invented modern sanitary fittings, when it came to basins we designed them to replace the washstand basin and jug and it remained usual practice for a very long time to run water into the basin then wash your hands. This even extended to tip-up basins with no plug at all (which used to be used on some railway trains and are still used in some caravans).

There was, by the way, never anything to stop mixer taps being installed in British houses: kitchen sink mixers have been around for decades and separate the mains/tanked supplies that are often blamed for the separate taps, and mixer taps for bathrooms (where both hot and cold usually came from the same cold water roof tank anyway) have been available since Victorian times - it's just that most people never thought they were worth the extra expense of much more complicated brassware and basins with specially cut holes if they were going to fill the basin anyway, or going to wash their hands for less time than it took to run the water hot.
 

birchesgreen

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Separate hot+cold taps are a problem because it means you need to choose between scalding yourself or freezing yourself when you need to wash your hands.
Funny i've lived in houses with separate taps for over 45 years and never ever had this problem.
 

westv

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Funny i've lived in houses with separate taps for over 45 years and never ever had this problem.
That must depend on how you wash your hands. I run the water to wet my hands, soap up, rub hands, rinse them and then turn the tap off. In toilets with those separate push down handles I always have to use cold as the hot is too hot by the time I rinse.
 

py_megapixel

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Some bathrooms are fitted with devices that limit the temperature of the hot water (presumably like a thermostatic shower, mixing in cold water once it gets uncomfortably hot) - perhaps @birchesgreen has one and @westv doesn't?

Mine does, and it's a really good idea - the convenience of separate hot and cold taps without the hot water ever being uncomfortably hot.
 

birchesgreen

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No nothing so high tech, just a hot water tank with an electric heating element in it. I generally use the cold water tap to wash my hands though.
 

AY1975

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Fluorescent tube light fittings
As I recall they used to be quite common in kitchens in the 1970s and 80s, presumably because they were brighter and people thought they would last longer than ordinary incandescent bulbs (and this was in the days before low energy bulbs (a k.a. Compact Fluorescent Lights) as we know them today had been invented).

We had one in our kitchen when I was a kid in the late 70s and early 80s, but then one day it gave up the ghost: I presume one of the starter motors at either end of the tube fitting had failed. Rather than get it fixed or replaced (which would probably have been too difficult and expensive) we simply replaced it with a conventional tungsten light. I suspect that the tendency of the starter motors on fluorescent lights to fail was what did for them. I still have a small wall-mounted fluorescent light in my kitchen at my current house, though. It's useful if I want a bit of light but I don't want or need the ceiling lights on.
 

birchesgreen

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Our kitchen and kitchen extension both have fluorescent tube lights, annoyingly they are slightly different lengths.
 

ChiefPlanner

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As I recall they used to be quite common in kitchens in the 1970s and 80s, presumably because they were brighter and people thought they would last longer than ordinary incandescent bulbs (and this was in the days before low energy bulbs (a k.a. Compact Fluorescent Lights) as we know them today had been invented).

We had one in our kitchen when I was a kid in the late 70s and early 80s, but then one day it gave up the ghost: I presume one of the starter motors at either end of the tube fitting had failed. Rather than get it fixed or replaced (which would probably have been too difficult and expensive) we simply replaced it with a conventional tungsten light. I suspect that the tendency of the starter motors on fluorescent lights to fail was what did for them. I still have a small wall-mounted fluorescent light in my kitchen at my current house, though. It's useful if I want a bit of light but I don't want or need the ceiling lights on.

Congratulation on your 1000th post ! - yes , fond memories on having one fitted with our new , smart . ivory green kitchen units. Modernity in South Wales......(that and the Trimphone showed we were innovators)
 

AY1975

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How about blankets and bedspreads rather than a duvet?
I have both a duvet and a blanket in cold weather.

And what about electric blankets? Does anyone still use them?
 

eMeS

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I have both a duvet and a blanket in cold weather.

And what about electric blankets? Does anyone still use them?

Very much so - back in the late 1950s I went walking at Easter in a very soggy SW of Ireland, and because of the time of year, I was wearing trousers instead of shorts. So, when it rained, my legs got wet and stayed wet. I paid for this by starting with arthritis, suffering from severe stiffness. My cure was to sleep under an overnight electric blanket. It's been my saviour.
 

birchesgreen

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Round three pin plug sockets, my mum's house still has a couple though they are not connected to the mains anymore.
 

eMeS

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Round three pin plug sockets, my mum's house still has a couple though they are not connected to the mains anymore.
I remember two of those in my parents' first house built in 1936/7. One was sited on the downstairs entrance hall between the doors to the "sitting room" and the "dining room"; and the other was on the landing similarly sited between the front and rear bedrooms. I think they were fused at 15A and we used them when plugging in our electric room heater - an open bar radiant fire and this (1KW?) heater was supposed to keep the "sitting room" warm enough for me to practise scales on the piano during the winter - decades before double glazing came in. I survived by wearing mittens when practising. Other smaller sockets were sited in our dining room, but I can't remember what they were. I next came across these round-pin 15A sockets when involved with stage lighting in the 1955-57 period.

After we moved house in 1949, my parents had new rectangular pin 13A sockets fitted - but whether there was a proper ring-main, I've no idea.
Several years later, I did National Service in Germany in a development laboratory, and there the electric mains were radial pattern, and fused at the distribution board.
 

Ediswan

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As I recall they used to be quite common in kitchens in the 1970s and 80s, presumably because they were brighter and people thought they would last longer than ordinary incandescent bulbs (and this was in the days before low energy bulbs (a k.a. Compact Fluorescent Lights) as we know them today had been invented).

We had one in our kitchen when I was a kid in the late 70s and early 80s, but then one day it gave up the ghost: I presume one of the starter motors at either end of the tube fitting had failed. Rather than get it fixed or replaced (which would probably have been too difficult and expensive) we simply replaced it with a conventional tungsten light. I suspect that the tendency of the starter motors on fluorescent lights to fail was what did for them. I still have a small wall-mounted fluorescent light in my kitchen at my current house, though. It's useful if I want a bit of light but I don't want or need the ceiling lights on.
Fluorescent tubes were introduced to kitchens mainly because they provided far better illumination of work surfaces. The extra life was more of a bonus. Later, when kitchens changed from being a place to prepare food to a 'feature', they lost popularity for aesthetic reasons.

In the conventional design, there is a single starter. If it fails (lack of 'ping' noise), just buy and fit another. Still readily available. In the meantime, you can often start the lamp by twisting the starter to break the circuit. I don't recall anybody removing a fluorescent fitting due to the very occasional need to replace the starter. The items at the end of the tube are often referred to as cathodes. They do eventually fail. If so, time for a new tube. At which point you realise just how dim a fluorescent tube gets if you use it until it fails.

Later models had an 'electronic ballast'. That has no separate starter. They should last for a long time, but if they do fail, you are looking at a new fitting. These did not exist in the 1970s, so unlikely to be what you recall.
 

AY1975

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Another thing that I don't think has been mentioned is dimmer switches - not sure how common they are today.

Ordinary low energy bulbs, or CFLs, don't work with dimmer switches, but there are special CFLs that are designed to work with them.

You can also get CFLs on which you can adjust the brightness using an ordinary light switch. You switch the light off and then immediately switch it on again, and the light then gets dimmer or brighter. You then switch it off and then immediately switch it on again a second time when it reaches the desired level of brightness.
 
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