Old outside toilets

[slotter47 11]

Can anyone confirm that some of the old outside toilets had seats in pairs.

[skippy 11]

My aunty and uncle had a long board with two round holes [different sizes] at their house at Stannington Village in the 40's, bins were placed under the holes to catch the waste, which was then dug into the garden veggie patch, which was a common thing for country people to do in those days, as there was no sewerage.

[old tup 30]

Hi Skippy I think the waste was called nightsoil or nightspoil which was dug in to the garden!.I remember our outside toilet well it was that cold,you dreaded the morning visit especially this time of year,you came out with goosebumps like billiard balls!.In the winter we had a storm lamp lit on the water pipe to stop it freezing,brrr I,m shivering thinking about it even now!.

[dennisgwild 10]

we also had an oil lamp in the outside loo---you could see the biggest spiders having a warm

[Texas 10]

They used to call them middens after the heaps of horse and pig **** outside the door. They still had them in Germany in the 60's. The Yanks used to call them 'Honeywells'.

[denlin 12]

Think they also used to be called thunderboxes

[Minimo 59]

We lived in a small village around 1960. The loo was outside and down 4 steps. No lighting of course, you had to take a torch if it was dark. You could guarantee finding spiders, earwigs, frogs or toads, snails, or all of them.

 

It was rare desperation that made me go down there at night.

[hillsbro 33]

we also had an oil lamp in the outside loo---you could see the biggest spiders having a warm

Oh the nostalgia.... You woke up in the morning, snug in bed. Most of you was warm enough but your nose-end was freezing. You could see a layer of ice on the inside of the the bedroom window, beyond which was a Christmas-card scene of snow lying deep and crisp and even. Grabbing a pullover you went down the stairs (two flights in our case - No 20 Dykes Hall Road was a cellar-kitchen house) and across the yard to the sub-zero outside lav. Needless to say, someone had used the last square of Daily Herald from the nail on the back of the door and, of course, the Tilley lamp had gone out during the night and the cistern was frozen solid. Back to bed, pausing on the way to put a match to the fire that had been laid the night before, and hoping that by the time you had to get up for school the living-room would be several degrees above zero. The good old days!

 

I borrowed that from a post I made on another thread. I don't ever remember seats in pairs, but some of the old earth-closet "thunderboxes" were indeed in pairs - here is a photo.

 

And in some parts of the world they didn't stop at pairs. I remember in the 1970s I happened to be in rural Russia (it's a long story...) in the village of Baryatino, where the villagers had no indoor plumbing of any kind, nor did they have their own thunderboxes. The village mayor proudly showed me the village's four-seater loo.

[denlin 12]

Weren't all that bad for us really we had a gosunder and left there when I was four and my brother was nearly 2 and we got house with flushing toilet but it was still outside but next to back door. They moved in inside in 1976

[skippermoomo 10]

Growing up in a back to back house we had to go out of door down street & up an entry to back yard so everyone knew where you was going,also had to share toilets,there were 3 toilets to 6 houses and you took it in turns whose week it was to clean them.

[Texas 10]

In the Army, in Egypt, our craphouses consisted of the usual 'midden' type but they were in a long corrugated iron shed, with about a dozen holes. A mate of mine used to go in, and if there were a few holes occupied he would shout, like some kind of conductor, 'All together now'. The 'fellaheen' came and cleared the pits out once a week and used the crap to fertilize various crops. Nothing wrong with that. Happy days!

[cookingfat50 10]

My aunty and uncle had a long board with two round holes [different sizes] at their house at Stannington Village in the 40's, bins were placed under the holes to catch the waste, which was then dug into the garden veggie patch, which was a common thing for country people to do in those days, as there was no sewerage.

 

no we were quite well off we had our own brick built SH in our yard with our own key, and roll of bronco x