Late 50s interior decor

Dikitriki

Dikitriki

Flying Squad
Hi folks

Here in Heysideland, we're almost in a position where we can start detailing the interiors of some of the terraced houses.

What we haven't been able to establish is what they would look like. I'm not talking about the furniture, but the furnishings.

What would they have had on the walls - wall paper? painted and ragged? distemper?
What about the floors - floorboards? Carpets? Rugs?
Would there have been picture rails? In all rooms?
How did bedrooms differ from sitting rooms?

Can anyone help with more information, maybe from personal recollection, or are we all too young to remember - or web links -or colour pictures?

Any contribution gratefully received.

Thanks

Richard
 
Dog Star

Dog Star

Western Thunderer
Hi Richard,

A couple of suggestions for those who are closer than me...

* Black Country Museum has several dwellings with restored interiors;
* St Fagans open air museum, many dwellings with restored interiors.

In both cases, one can go in and photograph the fixtures and fittings. Might be worth looking at the respective web sites.

I believe that the National Trust has some properties which are semi / terrace dwellings from the mid 20th century.

regards, Graham
 
JimG

JimG

Western Thunderer
Dikitriki said:
What would they have had on the walls - wall paper? painted and ragged? distemper?
What about the floors - floorboards? Carpets? Rugs?
Would there have been picture rails? In all rooms?
How did bedrooms differ from sitting rooms?

Can anyone help with more information, maybe from personal recollection, or are we all too young to remember - or web links -or colour pictures?
Click to expand...

Richard,

From memory :)

Walls were wallpapered with a patterned paper - woodchip appeared later in the 60s onward.
Pelmets over curtain rails.
Carpets and rugs on floors. Carpets rarely fitted, so floorboards showing round the edges with the boards stained black or brown, or painted. Same on stairs with the carpet in the centre of the treads and the edges of the treads stained or painted.
I can only remember picture rails on posher properties with high ceilings. :)
Plenty of wall furniture - like plates and plaques and pictures, flying ducks in a row and a mirror over the fireplace.
Plenty of ornaments around with possibly a display case in the main living room with the best china in it.
A chiming clock on the sideboard.
Furniture could be a mix of ancient and modern depending on how it was acquired. A three piece suite would only be there if the room was big enough to accommodate the settee/sofa. Upright piano in the main room.
If possible one room in the house would be the "good" room which was kept spick and span and used for visitors. The family used another room, like the kitchen, to live in.
Bedrooms were fairly practical - bed, chest of drawers and wardrobe/cupboard. Wallpapered decoration.
There was usually a single, central, electric light in each room and maybe the occasional table lamp. If the property was still gas lit (rare in the 50s), then the gas lamps would be wall mounted.

I'll probably think of more. :) Clydeside 1950 so maybe not too different from the Heyside area. :)

Jim
 
adrian

adrian

Flying Squad
I've got a few pictures (Grandad's slide collection) and a few memories but these are from the late 60's rather than 50's. So not sure how much use they'd be, I can post a few if interested.

Otherwise as Jim says, I always remember the antimacassers and the television hidden in a cabinet. A long sideboard and the middle leaf lifted to reveal the gramophone. Don't remember picture rails but I do remember an Aunt who had dozens of plates all arranged on one feature wall. IIRC most of them picture plates from holiday destinations, usually Devon or Cornwall. The curtains I remember were always quite heavy, thick and earthy colours.

As Jim mentioned stairs carpet just up the centre, stained at the sides with the brass rod across the back of each tread to hold the carpet down.
 
JimG

JimG

Western Thunderer
Adrian mentioning televisions reminds me that the radio would still have been the main broadcast receiving equipment in the 50s and the sets would probably have been a Bakelite 1930s model, or maybe something more basic using accumulators which had to be taken to the local electrical shop to get charged. But in our house we had an ex-RAF R1155 bomber receiver, which were sold off in their thousands after the war - great fun on the short waves when your mother wasn't in the room. :)

Jim.
 
Osgood

Osgood

Western Thunderer
You've simply got to put an oval of HORNBY Tinplate on one lounge floor - perhaps someone had a rich uncle!

Thinking about it - a tiny magnet rotating under the floor could drag a red 0-4-0 red express locomotive round and round.........:thumbs:
 
Osgood

Osgood

Western Thunderer
My dad had a JUNERO engineering set before the war - a sort of make-your-own Mecanno! A brilliantly simple combined guillotine, punch and bender which could manipulate something like 1mm x 10mm steel strip. I still have the tool somewhere - in fact I should start using it!
 
Dog Star

Dog Star

Western Thunderer
Thinking back to childhood days...

In the 1950s, in a semi-detached house built circa 1935 in a leafy suburb of East Cheam... diamond leaded lights to the front windows, plain Critall side hinged lights to the rear. Picture rail to the two up and two down main rooms, wallpaper below the rail and distemper above. All interior doors were painted and of the fielded and panelled style with round door handles. Rugs on floorboards up and down, carpet to staircase retained by stair rods - stairs say 30" wide and carpet of width 20", hence some of each tread / riser was visble to the side of the carpet. The stair carpet was woven in a paisley pattern with strong red and blue colours. The rear downstairs room was the living room, with an oval mirror over the fireplace (hung on a chain, still got the mirror...), a table and four chairs for meals, an Ekco television on low square table beside the fireplace. There was a built-in cupboard under the stairs accessed from rear room.

No recollection of parent's bedroom, the children's bedroom had two beds and two chest of drawers (polished wood). Oh and a Triang Jocko running on standard track all mounted on a 6' x 4' baseboard (which was propped against the wall when not in use).

Kitchen was behind the rear room... with a LCC gas cooker to one side of the kitchen window. A butler's sink under the window. A lazy susan hanging from the ceiling. I still have a curtain from the kitchen window if you want a photo of contemporary material.

regards, Graham
 
Dog Star

Dog Star

Western Thunderer
Richard,

My previous post relates details of my Parent's house. To add a different slant on that period some details of my Grandparent's house.

Again 1950s and now a mid-row, 1900s, terrace somewhere in Basilica Fields (Jordan - I do not jest...). Two up and two down with a kitchen /scullery out'back and a khazi beyond that. I was never allowed upstairs and rarely in the front room (known as the parlour). Hall way and downstairs rooms had a picture rail and a dado rail. Some walls had wallpaper and some were distemper. Front room had a rug, all other downstairs rooms had lino, a mid ochre colour. General impression was one of "dark and dingy". All meals taken in the rear room and on a table which was covered always with a patterned oil-cloth... that table smelt strongly of paraffin as that liquid was used for cleaning and as a disinfectant.

Whereas my home had diamond lights this house had sash frames to every window.

What is the upper end of the period for Heyside?

regards, Graham
 
Dikitriki

Dikitriki

Flying Squad
Thank you for your comments Graham.

Heyside is set in the 1958-1962 period, although that is sometimes stretched a little bit.

Yours

Richard
 
Wagonman

Wagonman

Western Thunderer
JimG said:
Richard,

From memory :)

Walls were wallpapered with a patterned paper - woodchip appeared later in the 60s onward.
Pelmets over curtain rails.
Carpets and rugs on floors. Carpets rarely fitted, so floorboards showing round the edges with the boards stained black or brown, or painted. Same on stairs with the carpet in the centre of the treads and the edges of the treads stained or painted.
I can only remember picture rails on posher properties with high ceilings. :)
Plenty of wall furniture - like plates and plaques and pictures, flying ducks in a row and a mirror over the fireplace.
Plenty of ornaments around with possibly a display case in the main living room with the best china in it.
A chiming clock on the sideboard.
Furniture could be a mix of ancient and modern depending on how it was acquired. A three piece suite would only be there if the room was big enough to accommodate the settee/sofa. Upright piano in the main room.
If possible one room in the house would be the "good" room which was kept spick and span and used for visitors. The family used another room, like the kitchen, to live in.
Bedrooms were fairly practical - bed, chest of drawers and wardrobe/cupboard. Wallpapered decoration.
There was usually a single, central, electric light in each room and maybe the occasional table lamp. If the property was still gas lit (rare in the 50s), then the gas lamps would be wall mounted.

I'll probably think of more. :) Clydeside 1950 so maybe not too different from the Heyside area. :)

Jim
Click to expand...


Add to that the doorways and most interior woodwork would have been dark brown, probably scumbled. Newest furniture would have been 'Utility' type, mostly made from plywood (but actually quite good). Dining tables always had a tablecloth. Thinking back to it still makes me shudder...

Richard
 
Dog Star

Dog Star

Western Thunderer
Dikitriki said:
Heyside is set in the 1958-1962 period...
Click to expand...
The reason that I asked the question is because my parents moved from Surrey to Bucks in 1957 and from a mid 1930s semi to a new detached house. Even at that date the house did not have fitted carpets - the rugs from Railway Cuttings went to the new house and were laid on paper over floorboards. Where a rug did not reach to a wall the floorboards were covered with a dark red, streaked, lino (which went under the edge of the rug). The stair carpet from Surrey made the journey as did all of the furniture. Unlike the house in Surrey, which had no built-in cupboards, the house in Bucks had built-in wardrobes in the bedrooms and china/food cupboards in the kitchen.

Forty years later and I am sitting on a dining chair, using the dining table, from those houses and can offer pikkies if desired. Similarly, I have a Welsh dresser, sideboard, firescreen, Davenport and Ercol wing-armchair from that period. If you are interested I have a typical "Willow Pattern" tea set which was given to my Grandparents as a wedding gift...

Thanks for the memories (acknowledgement to the BBC for Hubert Gregg's programme on the radio).
 
Dog Star

Dog Star

Western Thunderer
Wagonman said:
Add to that the doorways and most interior woodwork would have been dark brown, probably scumbled. Newest furniture would have been 'Utility' type, mostly made from plywood (but actually quite good). Dining tables always had a tablecloth.
Click to expand...
The doors in my home circa 1950s were light coloured (probably cream) - those for the home circa 1960 were four panels of reeded glass with the wood painted Dulux "Brilliant White".

The "utility" furniture, a table, that my parents had was oak whilst the chairs were beech. Most of that furniture was marked with what looked like two "pacman" logo.
 
taliesin

taliesin

Western Thunderer
Err, 3 ducks on the wall? Joking aside see if there are any really early episodes of Coronation Street floating around on the net or even stills, cheers Rob
 
Wagonman

Wagonman

Western Thunderer
Phill Dyson said:
These may help?

http://www.flickr.com/photos/70023venus2009/8148585261/

http://media-cdn.tripadvisor.com/media/photo-s/03/dd/23/9b/york-castle-museum.jpg

http://www.free-city-guides.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/08/York-Castle-Museum-1950s-Front-Room.jpg

http://cookit.e2bn.org/library/1237526194/kitchen1.original.jpg

http://gallery.nen.gov.uk/assets/0804/0000/0212/1950s_living_room_3_edited_mid.jpg

Phill
Click to expand...

Those are great shots but all very much state-of-the-art stuff suitable for a young middle class family. The environs of Heyside are more working class. Try to find clips from some of the kitchen sink dramas of c1960 like "Saturday Night' Sunday Morning" etc.
 
Dog Star

Dog Star

Western Thunderer
Richard,

You may think that this is too early for the late 1950s... the current re-run of Foyle's War on ITV3 is now series 7 and that series is set in the post war era. I am not sure of the date as yet, probably 1947-48, however some of the interior shots are likely to provide the "feel" of the fixtures for the 1950s. I have those DVD so can investigate further if felt desirable.

The relevant Wiki entry is likely to give an intended time period for the current episodes.

regards, Graham
 
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