Matthew Henty

Ian Jack has a written a marvelous column in the Guardian today, reflecting on our experience of cold in the central heated homes of the 21st century.

The revolution came, of course, with central heating. In the days when smoke still drifted from every household chimney and coal came to the door in sacks, my Latin teacher instructed us in the word “hypocaust”. Roman villas, he said, had a form of central heating concealed beneath their floors – the Romans being so advanced, and in this instance more advanced than we were… And then within 30 years nearly every house was fitted with its miniature variant… … sending children to nest in warm bedrooms, permitting more frequent baths, redistributing the living room furniture. Entire houses, rather than just one or two rooms inside them, now glowed wastefully with heat.

From this balmy atmosphere, fuelled largely by imported gas, we can view the external cold with far greater equanimity… Unless things go wrong, we don’t feel it, not as we used to do. And if things do go wrong, I recommend you pick up a copy of The Worst Journey in the World, which will make you thank God for even the coldest British bedroom – in that sense it is a very warming book.

I grew up in a house without central heating, but with plenty of condensation and damp. Some of my strongest memories are of the Sunday night bath, followed by a rather desperate and comical gallop down the stairs to the front room. Wrapped in a worn out towel, I would huddle with my brother around the two-bar gas fire. Eventually some level of warmth would return, enough to dress in vests, pyjamas, sock and jumpers before retiring to our beds layered with as many blankets as we could negotiate. I seem to remember him playing the, “I’m the youngest” card to get the marginal blanket.

And that was summer. Good times!