In your grandparents' shoes

I used to visit my father's parents and didn't like it. There was no fun in the house (possibly because my father had died) and on the one occasion that I was supposed to stay for a few days, I had to be brought home after one night although my gran did take me on the Liverpool overhead railway on the way home as this was due to close and she thought I should have the experience.

My mother hated the house, which also may have influenced me. When she had stayed there during the war, she cleaned out the fireplace and there were cockroaches there! My gran apparently told her that she shouldn't have pulled everything out.

When our grandchildren visit there is fun and laughter and we spend time teaching them things and playing games.

My grandparents were a great deal less involved with us; nor indeed were my parents with them. Neither set of Gparents lived close by, which partly explains it.

I have vivid memories of the two sets of Gparents because they lived in such different places - we had London Nanny and Seaside Nanny.

The London set lived in one of those tall edwardian buildings that are now all flats - but they owned the whole thing and there was a room to a floor - it wound up into the sky as far as we were concerned - going from cellar to basement kitchen and sitting room, to the ground floor where I was born, to 3 or 4 further stories above that. When we stayed we slept in the top room and we could look out over the rooftops - a bit like a scene from Mary Poppins! I vividly remember the pantry with its meat safe, and the cellar with its knife grinder - and the bathroom with its scary gas geyser.

Seaside Nanny had the virtue of the beach and all its delights nearby and that was where we spent all our summer holidays. Her OH, my step-grandad, committed suicide in the gas oven in the kitchen at her house when I was about 6 and I can remember being frightened of going in the kitchen for many years afterwards.

Things that were different:
- the freedom we had - they used to just let us out (either in the London street or to walk down to the village and get a train by ourselves to go to the beach - we would have been about 6 or 7 when we first started to do that).
- keeping chickens
- some very dull toys indeed! - a few wooden bricks.
- piles of bread and thick butter and endless roasts - roast potatoes and fatty meals in general.
- being expected to fit in with what the adults were doing rather than being "amused."
- Nanny L rubbing Golden Lion Ointment into a boil on my bum and putting a poultice on it - ouch!
- syrup of figs - 'nuff said!
- being expected to behave quietly when in the house and find things to do.

I could go on!

I think if you were a WAR TIME, baby there was not so much travelling around, so children didn't get to see G/P"S as much, particulary if they at other ends of the country.

https://www.gransnet.com/uploads/talk/201408/medium-175587-gggdad.jpg https://www.gransnet.com/uploads/talk/201408/medium-926455-gdad.jpg https://www.gransnet.com/uploads/talk/201408/medium-813300-granny.jpg

gosh - I had a complicated grand parent situation myself !My mums mother Margaret Mary Inglis left home when mum was only 6 mths, and she never met her, I wonder now given my mums depressions and my PND, if perhaps she had PND and couldn't cope - we now know they divorced 10 years later and she went, we think to Canada. Mums dad ended his life before I was born, and she never spoke much about him, I think she had an unhappy childhood.

My other Granny - in the photo, had my Dad illegitimately in 1929, and kept him, with her families support, and received maintenance until he joined the navy at 15, so I never knew either of my 'real' grandads, the man I knew as grandad was her husband , married in 1934, As they lived in Edinburgh and we lived down south, we only saw them in holidays - but they did write, and always sent presents. On holiday they were dour, no love lost between her and my mum, and seemed to enjoy being miserable ! I remeber making a real effort to catch the bus with my 2 month old baby to visit when they were at mum and dads, and they tutted and said they were planning to go out ( they hadn't budged off the sofa for 5 days )

I just dont thinks she was maternal - my parents were fantastic grandparents, giving my children the experience we missed, and I hope to emulate them. The older man, is my fathers grandad - he loved him very much, and didnt mind that he was born 'out of wedlock', and hid dad in a cupboard so he missed being evacuated

I have very happy memories of my grandparents - on the maternal side my Gran was a wonderful cook, baker and jam maker and I learned from her my other Gran was a whizz with the sewing machine and I vividly remember her making the drindle skirt I should have made for school. My mum always said my Gran on the paternal side was a rubbish cook but I loved and still remember her apple tarts and Spotted Dick wow were they good. Wish I knew how to post photos as I have many but I don`t so can`t. Only knew maternal "Poppa" and he was a businessman who had a rest every afternoon and when I was in the house I would get a summons to visit him - he was very good to me and gave me the money to buy a rabbit (my mother had banned such a thing) on the understanding that it resided at a neighbours house until my parents found out and my lovely Daddy built it a hutch and a run and it came to live with us. Ah happy days!!!
My DH and myself made sure and still do that when the GC visit there is fun and activities to do and I know they all (there are only 3) enjoy visiting us

Staying with my maternal grandmother-nanna-, meant sharing a bed. She slept in one bedroom and my grandad in another because he had TB, so I shared with her. She had a feather bed, which was very soft but had a life of its own. It rose into heaps and sunk into dints when you rolled over. When I stayed I was allowed to take her Goss china ornaments out of the cupboard and play with them, they were all different shapes- urns, houses even a tank. There was an ambulance until my brother tried to make it run down a broom handle! My grandson has his own room at my house but still sometimes creeps in in the middle of the night for a cuddle.
I never stayed with my paternal grandparents-don't know why. My grandad sat beside the open fire (we never saw a fireguard) in his chair with the newspaper held in front of him. Occasionally he would join in a conversation with "Ay well," or "Well, I'll go to our house!". My grandmother talked for both of them. She was always "nipping out" and would come back from the shops carrying cream cakes in a paper bag, cream horns were my favourite. She baked on a Saturday and made Yorkshire curd cheesecakes. My mother tried to get the recipe, but nanna never measured anything, it was all done by guess. I was always given treats when I visited. I introduced my own granddaughter to ice cream at 18 months. Almost 2 now she was asked by her mother if Granny had bought her ice cream when we were out and she said "Yes. Four."We hadn't had ice cream that day but she obviously associates me with treats!

I never met any of my grandparents. My mother's mother died when I was 4 months old. My father's mother died when I was four, but she lived in Berkshire and we lived in Yorkshire. Neither of them could afford to visit. Both grandfathers had died long before I was born.

Oh I remember sleeping with my grandmother - she made a terrible din snoring, but now and again she would stop and I would be terrified that she might have died! I never slept a wink!

We lived very near my my grand parents until we moved away when I was three or four.

My MGM and MGF were both born about 1890.

In 1911 census my MGM was working as a a boot machinist her father was described as a Paperhanger.
My MGM married a painter and decorator and I fairly sure that her husband was her father's trainee or colleague.

My MGF was a time served painter and decorator with the Co-op and worked there most of his working life.

They married in 1914/15. they had four daughters in two year intervals 1916, 1918, 1920, 1922. The last child died as a baby when my mum was about two, I remember my grandmother saying it was due to an error or negligence by a doctor and the baby died of pneumonia.

From what I know my grandmother did a bit of cleaning while her children were small and Granddad worked all his life as a painter and decorator buying his own small terraced house. As far as I now he did not serve in the war because of some health reasons but I never established what those were.

They had an allotment which was proudly attended for years. Their prize crop was blackcurrants which were made into blackcurrant jelly and bottled. The shelves in the pantry creaked with the weight of bottled blackcurrants and jars of salted down runner beans. Just sneeze and the blackcurrant jelly would be spooned into a cup of hot water to sooth all your ills.
Joseph Arthur H and Alice Maud H nee B this was taken at Clacton on Sea in about 1955

I lived with one of my grandparents, she was so strict, I was not allowed to speak. I was told to be seen and not heard which was very Victorian. I was expected to eat all my food up-no waste. We ate things like dripping on bread, margarine on bread, heavy things like dumplings and meat puddings and heavy sweets after a meal. I was not allowed to play with other kids much nor allowed to have friends home.
Any outings I had were to the home of my grans friends and were usually boring.

My clothes were good quality but I didn't have many, my 'school clothes were' for 'best' and my older school clothes were for playing in at weekends. I never wore trousers till 1968 when they became fashionable.

The thing that I hated most was not being allowed an opinion. I was told 'you're just a child', so I was of no importance.
The first thing I taught my daughter was to be seen, be heard and voice an opinion. I am so glad things have lightened up for kids of today.

My paternal GM lived in a tiny two up two down cottage with a block of outside privacy at the bottom of the communal concrete yard. Grandad died when my father was 15. He had been in the Household Cavalry in WW1. We didn't see much of nan even though she lived close as she and my mum did not get on.
My maternal GM used to visit every Sunday for tea. The one thing that springs to mind when I think of her is the mint humbugs she always had in her large handbag and her grumpy JR dog that sat under her chair and growled at everyone. GD was a merchant seaman and was hardly ever home
I don't remember ever being looked after or played with by either of them.

Should read privys stupid Kindle

After my Grandmother had raised her six children, and seen two of her sons die in their 20s, she went travelling alone. This was the 30s and she visited Egypt and also went to Australia and then New Zealand to visit her sisters and one of her daughters who was working on a sheep station.
My Grandmother always told wonderful stories of her travels and her memories of the hot springs in New Zealand got me into reading Ngaio Marsh books.
This photo was taken on the ship at the Suez Canal.

My grandmother was not really my grandmother but my Great Aunt. She adopted her SiL's illegitimate baby (my mother, born 9 months after Armistice Day) after her own baby died at 7 months from Spanish Flu
My real grandmother then emigrated to Canada to start a new life and was never heard from again.
Gran meanwhile went on to have five more daughters of her own, sadly never another son. She was a wonderful woman, wife of a coal miner, who ensured all her daughters had a good education and careers, mainly in nursing. Sadly two of her daughters pre-deceased her.
She died at 95, surrounded and cherished by her family.

My Father's parents ran a market garden and their daily lives were hard work from dawn till dusk. they had their own house but the facilities were an ash midden down the garden. Both Grandparents were loved by DC and GC alike but nobody ever heard them speak to each other.
Their children were stitched into flannel shirts for the winter and were regularly rubbed with camphor and goose fat to ward off chest infections.
All food was grown or reared on the premises and the very large walk-in larder had S hooks with sides of ham hanging from them.
Their life could not be more different from mine, I have not inherited their green fingers nor my Grandmother's stamina and wanderlust.
I have been interested to see that DS has inherited some of his GGP's values and love of the outdoors which is interesting after his relatively privileged upbringing.

JanePGransnet my uncle took over the market garden and they did eventually get an indoor bathroom but not until 1962. The house was lit by gaslight too until 1962.

My maternal grandma died when I was 12, but I was very fond of her, we went to her house about once a week, and she came to us for her dinner once most weeks. There were 5 of us, and the treat of the week at my grandma`s was a Mars bar, original size, cut into 5 pieces, my mother never bought such luxuries for us. My grandma had ver long, iron grey hair, long and straight, and I loved it when she took all the pins out and let me comb it, I can still remember the smell of her hair, and how soft it felt.
My paternal grandma lived about 150 miles away. My father was killed in WW2 six months before I was born, she and my mother never really got on, and we only saw her once a year, when she`d travel over the Pennines by bus to take me back with her for the school holidays. She wasn`t quite as clean as she ought to have been, and I have never forgotten the time she brought some bacon with her for her breakfast, my mother unwrapped it ready for cooking, and was horrified to find maggots on it! She was about to put it in the dustbin when my grandma said "You`re not throwing good bacon away", scraped the maggots off and cooked and ate it! Needless to say, my mother couldn`t wait to clean out her frying pan! She died when I was 21. Wouldn`t come to my wedding, because it was in a registry office, and she said we weren`t "proper married".

A male cousin and myself used to stay with my paternal grandmother. We were around 8 and 9. My gran could not cook and a simple meal like mince and potatoes was started around 8.am to be eaten at 12 mid day. It was foul, having boiled for so long. She lived in Kirkcaldy. I hardly knew my grandfather, he died when I was very young. He had been a miner and when the pits closed he worked in a linoleum factory. They were very poor.

My maternal grandmother died in her 40's and I loved staying on my grandad's farm in Ireland for around 6 weeks of the holidays. I always wanted to ride one of the horses, they being huge cart horses and I invariably got my wish. A totally different life with marginally more money. My aunt, the youngest daughter lived on the farm, caring for my granddad and her unmarried brother (at that time). She used to churn and make butter, with me "helping." It was sold locally. I also tried to milk a cow or two but they never allowed me to milk a drop. The hens were in and out of the kitchen as they fancied. Life was quite primitive with a loo in a shed in a field. Thankfully I had a better bladder in my youth than nowadays.

There was no light upstairs and oil lamps downstairs. I cannot remember when electricity "arrived".

Now that I CAN remember! I was 9, so it would have been 1952, they started at the top of our street putting electricity in, and at the bottom of the street whipping out the old black lead fireplaces from our kitchens and installing a modern version, but still with an oven. As luck would have it, they met up at our house, so we had all the muck and bother in one go.
Sorry, I digressed from the topic.

We lived next door to my maternal GPs until I was ten. They were second cousins and hadn't married until they were both 34 and I think the arrival of my DM was a bit unexpected. I spent a lot of time with them, mum finding parenthood a bit of a chore and I can remember learning to light a fire under the copper in the kitchen and turning the handle on the big mangle outside and reading with Nana or going off for the day with Grandad and a sandwich lunch to his allotment about a mile away. He was a stone mason - a Monumental Stonemason no less - and worked on many cathedrals and big churches. He never retired and died of a heart attack walking home from work at 76 years old. Nana was a bit loopy and fun.

My paternal parents lived in the centre of Norwich and I would be 'parked' with them - or rather Nana S - while my parents went shopping. Never saw much of Grandad. He was usually in the family shop or at the betting shop. Nana S just absorbed children and there was often a cousin or two to play with. She taught me about sex watching her rabbits, death when one of the chickens had to be killed for the pot. Only a small back yard, but it was crammed with animals. Grandad was a professional soldier in India during the First World War. When he came back he got a job sorting mail on the night train to London, then ran a market garden during the day, before buying the shop in the city. He bred canaries too and there were stacked cages in a sunny back room. I think everyone worked harder and longer then. No 'Me Time'. They had family Christmas parties too with games and so much noise, which I wasn't used to. I think I had a very lucky childhood.

Why?

That question was addressed to GNHQ.

What interesting descriptions of childhood with Grandparents,very much enjoyed reading them.