Gas Lit Houses

“And all my toys about me lay
To keep me happy all the day”

That's it Baubles. ?

GabriellaG54 how strange, I had that book too. It was a Christmas present I got in the early fifties from my grandfather.

I live near Beverley where we have a gas lit pub.
Its referred to as “ Nellies” in fond memory of a formidable landlady.
Officially it’s the White Horse.
The smell and glow of the gas is quite amazing, it really is like stepping back in time.

We had gas lighting when I was a child, and a fireplace range that had to be black leaded. My mother cooked on the fire and with the oven in the range, but she also had a double gas ring to supplement it. We had gas mantles in the bedrooms, but we weren`t trusted with them, so carried a bicycle lamp up to bed.
We had electricity installed (council house) when I was 8 or 9, also the old range fireplace was taken out and replaced by a more modern one which also had an oven, it was a beigey colour. Our house was halfway down the street, they started at one end putting electricity in, and at the other end with the fireplaces, trouble was they met up at our house, so we had both lots of workers in at the same time.
My grandma was broken hearted when her very forceful daughter insisted on her having a new tiled fireplace in the front room instead of the old black leaded range, she cried when it was being taken out.

Remember the gas mantles, flat irons, coal fire which was replaced by a very ugly gas fire in the early 50's, also having to take batteries which were very heavy to be filled with some kind of acid so we could listen to the radio (DGS looks at me when I call it a wireless). Our leerie was "Willie the Lamp"

Accumulator! That's what the battery was called. We took ours to a local bike shop (?!) every Saturday to get a refill.

Our batteries were delivered to the door, full of horrid looking black stuff, kept in the pantry, and woe betide us if we touched them, we were told all sorts of nasty things would happen. We never had a gas fire then, stepfather was a miner, so we got cut price coal delivered whenever we needed it, dumped at the front gate, so it was all hands on deck shovelling it up and taking it to the coal shed. The pieces of shale were chucked under the hedge, we used it to mark out hopscotch pitches on the pavement instead of chalk.

Septimia, I do hope that you're not using that ironing board

www.asbestos.net/asbestos/products/iron-rests/

My older brother and I had torches, Pifco torches which were shaped somewhat like a hip flask without the dinge in one side.
The top was black metal and slid from side to side when pushed to allow the bulb to shine through the different convex glass colours set into it.
The centre one was clear the red glass on the right and green on the left.
We used to shine the green light under our chins to look ghostly.
We also holidays in bungalows in N. Wales which had both gas and oil lamps. The bungalows were named Deeside and Danescourt.
Dad would trim the lamps every evening then we'd play ludo, snakes and ladders and the Old Maid card game before Ovaltine and bed.

holidays holidayed.

In our village a couple of years ago, the shop that had been run by 2 elderly spinster sisters was sold when one of them died and the other went into long term care. When the shop was cleared out, ready for putting up for sale, a large box of Aladdin gas mantles was found, all priced up at 5d!

My parents bought the house next door to my grandparents' house in 1952 and they had mains electricity put on. My grandparents always used the gas lights and I don't recall if they ever had electricity connected.

They were small Victorian terraced houses in a Surrey village.

Yes, my gran had gas wall lights, can remember the bed recess in the main room and being in the bed there. Have exterior photos of the cottage, but now sadly demolished.

Our last house still had the gas lamps (not working, though) in the bedrooms. It was the 1970s so we removed them, along with the bedroom fireplaces. Of course, now they'd be valued original features but back then it was all about gaining space and streamlining everything.

We had them in our touring caravan and I really liked them

I grew up in a gas-lit house and used to run down the road to buy mantles when the last one broke

The mantles were lovely and silky until you fitted them round the bracket and lit them, then they went very stiff and fragile.

The poems being quoted are from Robert Louis Stevenson’s Child’s Garden of Verses. I immediately thought of them when gas lamps were mentioned, too.

Maybelle, the house ou looked at could have been my grans. She had gas lights and a well along with a tap for drinking water.

In the 80's we use to go and stay in a remote cottage in central Wales, that not only had gas lights but not road or lane to get to it. So you had to hike about mile up a steep hill carrying everything you needed. Great fun in the dark.

‘I was the giant great and still
That sits upon the pillow-hill
And sees before him, dale and plain.,
The pleasant land of counterpane.’

I like 'From a Railway Carriage'. I used to read it to my children, two of whom are big fans of some kinds of poetry.

I was born in the 1930's so remember gas lighting quite
vividly. And I was told I used to stare at these lights a lot.
My auntie who lived in the countryside had her only toilet in a shed in the garden. It was just a plank with a hole in it.
I loved her, but hated having to use that toilet.

We had gas light in our hall and up the stairs when I was a child living in a Victorian house. It was very spooky as it cast large shadows! It has always reminded me of Robert Louis Stevenson's Shadow March!

I do. The boarding school went to was in a 19th century mansion which had not been modernised at all. Prefects could all use tapers lit from the open fires, and light the lights taking due care of the flimsy mantles.
The bathrooms would be museum pieces if they still existed.

The small Highland hotel my parent took me to each summer had not even gas. It had |Tilly lamps and candles. I took a chamber stick candle to my bedroom in the attic.

When Mum and Dad first married and I was born we lived with my maternal grandmother. She has the range cooker in the back kitchen,kettle always on the heat and the side ovens for cooking etc. She eventually got a gas cooker for the scullery,don’t remember gas lights but we did have lamps upstairs and an outside loo full of spiders. We moved to a new council house when I was 4 with electricity but still had open fires and no heating up stairs. Caravan holidays even in the late 50s always had gas lights, Dad used to get very cross if he touched the mantle with the match and broke it. Sounds like the dark ages now.