The gas heater sounds like our source of hot water at the time - it was in the kitchen; in my early childhood we didn't have a bathroom but we did have a bath in the kitchen (with fold-up work surfaces over it).
There were fireplaces in both the downstairs rooms; the living room fire was always lit in winter, but the front room only on special occasions. Upstairs there were portable gas and electric heaters; there were fireplaces in the bedrooms, but we no longer lit fires there.
Being able to have coal fires, even though they meant so much work, was, I think, an emotive thing for my mother. In the horrible winter of early 1947, when I was less than six months old, lack of coal and general fuel shortages meant that she was living in one room of said house with a single bar electric fire. This was so stressful that she temporarily took me back to Swansea (where I had been born) to stay with her mother, who being in South Wales was more able to get coal, and stayed there till the summer when she took me back to London and my father.
Incidentally, I still don't have central heating; I don't like it. Even if it's a gas fire, I like to have a fire to, er, focus on. And radiators take up wall space that could be better filld with bookshelves.
Re: Aha!
There were fireplaces in both the downstairs rooms; the living room fire was always lit in winter, but the front room only on special occasions. Upstairs there were portable gas and electric heaters; there were fireplaces in the bedrooms, but we no longer lit fires there.
Being able to have coal fires, even though they meant so much work, was, I think, an emotive thing for my mother. In the horrible winter of early 1947, when I was less than six months old, lack of coal and general fuel shortages meant that she was living in one room of said house with a single bar electric fire. This was so stressful that she temporarily took me back to Swansea (where I had been born) to stay with her mother, who being in South Wales was more able to get coal, and stayed there till the summer when she took me back to London and my father.
Incidentally, I still don't have central heating; I don't like it. Even if it's a gas fire, I like to have a fire to, er, focus on. And radiators take up wall space that could be better filld with bookshelves.