This was in Scotland, which back then always had cold, wet winters and cool, damp summers. Having unheated bedrooms and bathrooms was completely normal, and even if in some houses the largest bedroom might have a small fireplace of its own, having a fire there was extra work and certainly in our house it wasn't normally used. Perhaps it would have been during exceptionally cold winters like 1947 or 1963.
Domestic culture, by which I mean the way in which people used their homes, therefore reflected the need to stay as warm and comfortable as possible in a largely unheated house, which had no double glazing and minimal insulation compared with modern standards. In the evening the family gathered in the living room. If you sat too close to the fire you would almost toast yourself, especially your face, but for us kids sat on the floor (not too close to the fireplace) our backs would still feel cold.
Getting up to go to the toilet meant putting on your cardigan and being as quick as you could. Going to bed involved our Mum hanging our pajamas in front of the fire for a few minutes to warm them up while she filled hot water bottles for our beds, then getting changed as quickly as possible, slippers and dressing gowns on, and into bed double quick. In the morning there might be ice on the inside of the single-glazed windows.
All of that came to mind when I read this article on the Low Tech Magazine website:
It's a fantastic website, full of articles about sustainable, low-tech solutions for modern problems like staying warm in winter and cool in summer. It is written and maintained by Kris De Decker, who lives in Barcelona and who runs it on a solar and battery powered Raspberry Pi in his apartment. If you haven't come across it and you have any interest in sustainability, take a look.
That particular article points out that it's much more efficient to warm a person than the whole space they inhabit. You can heat a complete home so that even at 60° North you can sit around in mid-winter in shorts and a t-shirt, but it will use a lot of energy. Or you could do what our ancestors did, or adopt a modern version of that, put on long trousers, socks, a woolen jumper, use a hot-water bottle or an electric blanket, or even build your own solution, like the one detailed in this article:
Winter is Coming: Build a solar-powered Foot Stove
What I like about Kris De Decker's writing is that he does his research properly and shares it with you in an understandable way, while also being very thorough. In case it's been a while since you studied physics, he gives you an outline of what convection and radiation are, or temperature gradients, energy efficiency and how insulation works.
Coming back to childhood experiences, I now know why in our Scottish living room the kids were on the floor with toasted faces and cold backs, while the adults occupied the arm chairs. In fact the grown-ups missed a trick and could have bought hooded chairs, like the ones pictured on the website. Incidentally, De Decker uses dithered images, which use less storage and energy than normal photos. The article about the solar-powered server is worth reading too.
Final thought: the best toast I've ever had was made using a toasting fork in front of a coal fire.
Email: kdan01 [at] posteo [dot] net