50s/60s Britain and Now

[iL Dottore]

The COVID-19 lockdown has, amongst many other things that had me rummaging through the detritus of my early life, which were spent growing up in 50s/60s Britain. This got me thinking about what has really changed in the UK since then. And I’d love to know how other RMWebbers view the changes as well.

 

To start things off, here is a list of what I think has really changed or disappeared since then...

• Saturday morning cinema for kids (gone)
• ”Foreign Food” being limited to the occasional Italian, Chinese and Indian restaurant (all serving dishes heavily modified from the originals to suit the British palate)
• A British Dishes section on all “Foreign Food Restaurant” menus
• Chocolate Cigarettes (gone)
• Sweets from large glass jars, weighed out into paper bags
• ”Broken Biscuits” at pennies per pound.
• Olive oil - only available at the chemist (and then only in small bottles)
• ”Proper” butchers with carcasses hanging in the window (pretty much disappeared today, I think)
• Double-Rovers (combined LT underground and bus pass)
• Universal smoking.
• Wooden escalators
• Smoking and Non-Smoking areas in buses, trains, ships and aircraft.
• 45’s with the removable centre insert (so the record could played at home or in a jukebox)
• Ham, cut off the bone as you waited (and whatever has happened to “York Ham”: boiled, de-rinded, rolled in yellow breadcrumbs and then sliced to order?)
• Cadbury’s Smash (instant mashed potato) 
• BabyCham (pseudo Champagne - marketed as being a “sophisticated” drink)
• TV advertising for all kinds of tobacco products
• Black and White TV
• Milky Bars
• Skool Uniform of short trousers and blazer, plus cap (not forgetting white shirt, skool tie, knee-high socks and lace-up black leather shoes)
• Leather satchels for skool.
• Proper plimsolls!
• The wooden ruler and/or cane as punishment at skool
• Biscuits with rock-hard pink icing amongst the biscuit tin selection
• Walnut Whips (I haven’t seen those for ages..)

 

And what about you? What do you think has radically changed/disappeared?

iD

[TheQ]

You can still buy boxes of broken biscuits.

We have ( 5 miles away)  a proper butchers,  although the carcasses are out in the back room being prepared.  There are others in Norfolk. 

There is the odd sweet shop with sweets in jars,  I know of two within 25 miles, though the jars are now plastic. 

Never lived within a child's traveling distance to a cinema, now it's 25 miles to one. I've been to a cinema less than   half a dozen times in my life. 

Smash is now owned by bachelor's and still available . Only ever used the stuff while camping or out sailing,  it needs lots of butter to make it palatable .

 Proper plimsoles are still available but rarely in plain white anymore. 

Black and white TV was all that was available in the outer hebridies until the very early 1980s.

 

For me the odd things I half miss. 

Radio 2 on long wave 247metres being the only radio available  ( in the Hebrides) .

Phones calls requiring going out to a red box.

Only having BBC 1 TV available 

Genuine bakers,  the last one I know of locally ( on bakers street) closed in early 2000s

Local Banks, the three in the local town have gone, I have a 25 Mile round trip to get to one now. 

Moving home dad and myself are both ex services,  I've lived here now nearly double the time of anywhere else.. 

Having to travel 180miles to school, council run not private.. 

 

[Tim Chambers]

Calling Policemen,Teachers and Vicars "Sir" ! And Mirabile Dictu, no social media!

You know, looking back, the 50s/60s were a good time to be growing up, or is that just a sign of my rapidly advancing years?

Tim.

[Chris M]

You can still get walnut whips at Blackheath (west Midlands) market

 

[Ozexpatriate]

2 hours ago, iL Dottore said:

• Skool Uniform of short trousers and blazer, plus cap (not forgetting white shirt, skool tie, knee-high socks and lace-up black leather shoes)
• Leather satchels for skool.
• Proper plimsolls!

My formative years were spent in Australia, not Britain so I've little to add that is directly on topic.

 

I can say however that when I first went off to school we had "sandshoes" (instead of plimsolls) for sports. They were canvas and white and were cleaned with a solution of pipeclay - the same way marines kept their cross-belts white since before Trafalgar. I believe this name arose because they were the standard tennis attire (made by Dunlop) and the most common tennis surface was "ant-bed" - a rolled aggregate sandy loam (which is different from the European 'brick dust' clay surface). Anyone who has seen boules played in the South of France or bocce in Italy will have seen a surface similar to "ant-bed".

 

The Aussie "ant-bed" tennis court is rarely seen since the 1970s.

 

Australian boys still have a school uniform of short trousers, knee high socks, often with lace-up black leather shoes, no blazer, but a hat - not a "Boy's own" cap but a broad-brimmed hat, or cap with a shade in the back. When I first went to school there was a uniform hat (sort of like a little fedora) but it was not "cool" and no one wore them. With the 1980s, "slip, slop slap" skin cancer awareness campaign in Australia, hats became mandatory uniform items and pupils were not permitted on the playground without wearing them.

 

My first school bag was not a leather satchel but a very rectangular backpack made of sturdy cardboard (like suitcases of the time), with riveted, metal corners. The lid was hinged and closed with a clasp like a toolbox.

 

Edited April 6, 2020 by Ozexpatriate

[great central]

32 minutes ago, Chris M said:

You can still get walnut whips at Blackheath (west Midlands) market

 

 

There's been one hanging around in our kitchen for a while, I ate it yesterday.

Milky bars are still available, also as buttons.

Our local Sainsbury's has a deli counter where ham, turkey and others are sliced off the bone as you wait. It's closed at the moment so staff can refill shelves, no idea when or if it will reopen.

Edited April 6, 2020 by great central

[eastglosmog]

On the not quite so romantic front:

    Outside toilets at school

    Septic tanks (no main drainage at home)

[Devo63]

Until my first year of high school a cap (referred to as 'boys own' type above by Michael)  was a required part of the uniform at the two private colleges I attended. Mine were dark green at the first school and purple at the second. We also had matching coloured blazers which were usually bought a couple of sizes larger to 'grow into'. The caps for most of the colleges were plain, single colour types but Pulteney Grammar School had a concentric navy(?) and white ring ring pattern to them - perfect as a target for gobbing from overpasses and bridges. In senior school we were finally allowed to wear long trousers as part of the grey standard school suit.

An early memory is of the couple of years after Australia introduced decimal currency. My great-grandfather would give me a two bob coin every time I visited him. I would accompany my father to the bank and exchange it for a brand new twenty cent coin (the old coins remained in circulation for years) and would buy bags and bags of sweets at the general store. It wasn't until years later that I found out my father would reclaim the two shillings from the bank manager and gave it back to my GGF when we next went to see him for a repeat performance.

The things I miss the most from the era are the many corner grocery stores and little hardware shops etc. that have been driven out of business by the large conglomerates. There was one local hardware shop, still labeled as an ironmongers, which closed down in the mid seventies. In the back corner was a couple of shelves stocking a supply of various Triang bits and bobs, a selection of Airfix plastic kits and a rack of Humbrol paints.

 

Dave R.

     

[TheQ]

42 minutes ago, eastglosmog said:

On the not quite so romantic front:

    Outside toilets at school

    Septic tanks (no main drainage at home)

The out toilets with only a half roof over the sitters open over the standers,  but if the wind was in the wrong direction both got wet.

 

Still got a septic tank.... 

 

Edited April 6, 2020 by TheQ

[Ozexpatriate]

5 minutes ago, Devo63 said:

The things I miss the most from the era are the many corner grocery stores and little hardware shops etc.

Also the (once) ubiquitous Aussie "Milk Bar".

[Chris M]

43 minutes ago, eastglosmog said:

On the not quite so romantic front:

    Outside toilets at school

  

And the competition to see who could pee furthest up the wall in these outside toilets. I never won

[Ozexpatriate]

1 minute ago, Chris M said:

And the competition to see who could pee furthest up the wall in these outside toilets.

At the high school I attended, the urinal was against a brick wall that did not extend to the ceiling. On the other side of the wall was the hand washing space. The competition amongst taller boys was to see who could pee over the wall and onto boys washing their hands.

 

I'm not sure when this building was constructed, but it was certainly there before 1973. The building is there still but is likely renovated.

[drjcontroller]

1 hour ago, Chris M said:

You can still get walnut whips at Blackheath (west Midlands) market

 

 

Is it my imagination or did Walnut Whips used to contain a second walnut inside the cone of chocolate on the base?

 

Douglas

[burgundy]

Bombed sites were still pretty obvious in Hastings until well into the 60s. 

The remains of a doodlebug in a field near the school. 

Nobody has mentioned steam trains! The line from Hastings was dieselized in the late 50s. 

K's kits were the cutting edge of railway modelling. 

Hornby Dublo in blue boxes.

£/s/d. Disappeared in 1971. Half crowns, sixpences and massive old pennies. Farthings anyone?

Bacon slicers in grocer's shops. Jokes like "do not sit on the bacon slicer, we are getting behind in our orders".

Almost invariably, people wore hats. Not sure when that became less common.

Dial telephones. We had a 3 figure phone number.

A history course on the History of the British Empire - in the mid 1960s.

Pasta = macaroni

Teachers and fathers of friends with very obvious disabilities from the war. Many probably had forms of PTSD but not then recognised. 

Sterling crises. Travelling abroad with a £50 limit.

Travelling to the US by sea in 1964, but travelling to the Hebrides in a DC3. Air travel was pretty unusual. 

Best wishes 

Eric 

 

 

Edited April 6, 2020 by burgundy

[Hroth]

2 hours ago, TheQ said:

Radio 2 on long wave 247metres being the only radio available  ( in the Hebrides) .

 

Radio 2 Longwave was on 1500 metres.  247 metres was Radio 1

 

My own particular memory, icicles hanging off the eaves of the school toilet block and going to school with deep snow up to the top of our wellies. 

[Devo63]

27 minutes ago, Ozexpatriate said:

Also the (once) ubiquitous Aussie "Milk Bar".

In South Oz these were always "the Deli". We tried to avoid our eastern neighbours variations of language, eg. in SA we eat Fritz while the Easterners eat Devon. One local specialty was the "Pie Floater' which was available from the various bakery owned pie carts located around the city and suburbs of Adelaide - now all gone. At the Adelaide Railway Station pie cart you could enjoy your meat pie drowned in pea soup with an old wino on one side of you and a politician or visiting celebrity standing on the other while cars whizzed by behind you only a couple of feet from your rear end. 

[great central]

1 hour ago, drjcontroller said:

 

Is it my imagination or did Walnut Whips used to contain a second walnut inside the cone of chocolate on the base?

 

Douglas

 

Yep, they were a lot bigger with much thicker chocolate as well. Could have demolished this one in one go but didn't.

[BernardTPM]

1 hour ago, drjcontroller said:

 

Is it my imagination or did Walnut Whips used to contain a second walnut inside the cone of chocolate on the base?

Douglas

I'm sure that not only was there a second walnut half inside the creamy part, but the base was biscuit with some kind of jam (strawberry?) on it. The current one is a sickly, pale reflection of that.

 

Things now rarely seen in town - hedges (before moving in 2013 we had the last surviving hedge in out street - the new owners ripped it out without a thought for the wildlife. Better days for sparrows:

 

 

[Colin]

How about (manual) cars with only  3 forward gears? I well remember my Dad’s Ford Popular and 100E Anglia which both had to be almost revved to destruction in 2nd before dropping into 3rd, when it would almost sigh with relief.

One of his friends had a Vauxhall with a terrible vague column gear change that would occasionally try to select reverse, with “interesting” results.

Radios and heaters were only supplied in the Deluxe trim version as I remember! Dad’s cars were company vehicles and he only got a deluxe after becoming a Senior rep!

[caradoc]

2 hours ago, Devo63 said:

The things I miss the most from the era are the many corner grocery stores and little hardware shops etc. that have been driven out of business by the large conglomerates. There was one local hardware shop, still labeled as an ironmongers, which closed down in the mid seventies. In the back corner was a couple of shelves stocking a supply of various Triang bits and bobs, a selection of Airfix plastic kits and a rack of Humbrol paints.

Dave R.    

 

Agree with that; Near my home in Oxford in the 60s was the local chemist, who also sold Revell kits - I recall buying a Flying Fortress (model !) there. There were also several shops in and around the city selling Triang trains, now there is not a single model railway stockist in Oxford.

 

One thing I don't miss, and the reason I would never want to go back to those times, was the lack of central heating: Our semi had coal fires in the front and back rooms, and apart from the heat (what there was of it) transmitted via the chimney breasts to the front and back bedrooms (neither of which was mine), that was it. We did later have a paraffin heater in the downstairs hall, one of my jobs as a kid was to fill up the can at the local hardware store. My bedroom, the smallest, had two outside walls, so my Dad lined those walls with expanded polystyrene, to try and retain a bit more warmth. Getting dressed in winter was of necessity a very quick operation !

 

(Re walnut whips, I'm sure I've seen them on sale at Marks & Spencers recently ?)

 

 

[Kylestrome]

Here's my list.

 

Things missed:

- Airfix kits for 2 shillings (or thereabouts)

- A proper high street with a complete range of shops (pre-supermarket)

- A multitude of British made cars that I could actually put a name to

- The Cornish Riviera Express, with a Castle on the front, to take us on our annual summer holiday

- Sweets for a halfpenny or penny. You could get quite a mixture for six (old) pence

- Thunderbirds on TV

- Matchbox toys

- Dinky and Corgi diecast cars

- Lone Star Treble 0 push-along trains

- Slot cars

- Bristol Freighters and Carvairs at Southend airport

- Radio Caroline

 

Things not missed:

- Shorts trousers in winter

- Izal toilet paper

- Short back and sides haircuts

- Long trousers at half mast because of ‘growth rate’

- School cap

 

David

[30368]

Nice idea! Most of things past have been mentioned. A few more I recall from my 1950's childhood:

 

• Freezing to death at Woking lido for school winter swimming lessons. Obviously teacher was in a tracksuit and thick pullover shouting encouragement!
• Summer swimming at Woking lido and freezing to death when one got out! Compensated by hot Bovril and smiths crisps with little blue salt bag!
• Making "money" by returning pop bottles for the deposit even if they were not yours! (Useful idea for the future)
• Collecting a "penny for the guy" from around September. The weeks leading up to November 5th were dangerous, although we were oblivious to the fact, given that we had access to many bangers culminating in the 3d "blockbuster".
• Bonfire night was a joy bonfire in the back garden, father letting off the fireworks (Dad had a trick of attaching a banger to a rocket which was ignited by the exhaust! Very bad!

Kind regards,

 

Richard B

 

Edited April 6, 2020 by 30368

[tomparryharry]

South London:- Peak Freans. We always had broken biscuits, in large clear plastic bags. My sister worked in the city, and used to come home with some interesting, but different foods. Large tins of Spam, what you'd now call 'catering size' tins. Potatoes that came in barrels. Tomato puree. 

 

We could always hear the ships hooters from the docks in London. Being frightened by the dinosaurs in Crystal Palace park. My father, holding me up, so I could look at Crystal Palace station, then being knocked down. Milk being delivered by horse & cart, and having the then, new, electric milk float. Horse-drawn bakers van, as well. Christmas lights in Oxford Street. Dad was one of the first people to have a cassette player, which developed a fault. so I remember a long trip out to Croydon Airport, where Phillips had an office. By then, It was a Bowaters depot, and I was amazed by the rows of lorries. 

 

Saveloys. I love saveloys. It used to be a Saturday treat in our house. 

 

Brannan Thermometers. They used to have a factory over the road from us. One day, someone dropped a bottle of mercury outside the factory gate, with the subsequent little blobs of liquid metal all over the pavement.  We didn't know any better..... Tried to pick it up.....

 

Sweets? Yes, in glass jars, but plastic nowadays.  Caramac, Galaxy, Mars Bars, Topic, Kit-Kat, Bar 6, 

 

Buying paraffin from the hardware shop on Wasdale Road. 2s a gallon. 

 

I'd carry on, but my nurse has called for my medication. "Yes dear. I'm hurrying up....."

[russ p]

Not being quite that old was born in 66, was the threat of instant vaporisation or a lingering death from a nuclear attack a very prevalent thought at the time obviously it must have been in the Cuban missile crisis 

[jonny777]

I have a hedge. I planted it myself. I bought 25 bare rooted privet plants (they looked like dead sticks at the time) and put them at the border of the front garden and the footpath. 

 

They needed to be watered quite a lot in hot dry summer weeks for the first few years, but are now about 12 years old and going well. I trim them once a year after flowering, and that is that.