Dressing-gowns were worn at night, over pyjamas, or a nightshirt for extra warmth in houses without insulation and central heating, or were worn during the daytime over your everyday clothes, if you were half-dressed and had unexpected visitors.
Layers! Similar to the fashions of the day, Victorians relied on layers and insulation to keep the home warm. Do you think that the long, thick drapes seen in movies and paintings of Victorian times were a mere interior decorating craze? Think again.
People wore layered clothing made of wool, flannel, or fur. Typical winter outerwear included hooded capes, great coats, scarves, cloaks, shawls, scarves, muffs, gloves, mittens, thick socks, stockings, long wraps, caps, hats, and ear mufs.
Fireplaces, of course, were ubiquitous, and firewood had been used for hundreds of years. But coal—which was burned in specially designed fireplace grates—emerged as an alternative fuel for the hearth. Stoves provided a more efficient way to distribute heat than the open hearth.
During medieval times, men, especially outlaws, would keep warm in the winter by wearing a linen shirt with underclothes, mittens made of wool or leather and woolen coats with a hood over a tight cap called a coif. Even if the men lived outside and it rained, they would wear their wet woolen clothing to stay cozy.
Peasants of theses ages normally used a fire pit in the middle of the room to keep warm. Smoke would blow out of a hole in the middle of the roof. The home was usually quite smoky, but that was a small price to pay to keep their families warm. Other than having a fire, people had animal heat to depend on.
People made walls out of mud, straw, rocks, or bricks. These thick walls would protect the house from heat in the day and would provide warmth at a steady rate after the sun went down. In places that had extreme seasonal changes, homes would have overhangs.
Victorian houses traditionally had a fireplace in all the rooms including bedrooms and a fire or stove is a really good way to add to the heat generated by your modern central heating system.
People wore extra-warm clothes inside and, when possible, stayed by the fire. Woollen coats, scarves and mittens were common. Some lined their winter clothes with fur. Although fur is often associated with luxury clothing, peasants are believed to have lined their winter clothes with rabbit and lamb.
They used thick stones
Stones like adobe and brick are harder to heat, so they are able to keep cool air in. Many homes were built out of brick in the 1700s and 1800s to combat the heat, as these heavier materials were known to be drafty and cool.
It was often the structures beneath Victorian clothing that gave women's fashion its form. Corsets (also known as stays) moulded the waist, while cage crinolines supported voluminous skirts, and bustles projected a dress out from behind.
To keep warm at night, precautions were taken in the bedchambers. The enslaved chambermaids would add a heavy wool bed rug and additional blankets to the beds for the winter months. In the Chesapeake region, rugs were often imported from England and were especially popular in the years before the Revolution.
In northern England roast beef was the traditional fayre for Christmas dinner while in London and the south, goose was favourite. Many poor people made do with rabbit. On the other hand, the Christmas Day menu for Queen Victoria and family in 1840 included both beef and of course a royal roast swan or two.
For example, insulating the loft, draughtproofing between floorboards and insulating around gappy doors will all pay for themselves within a couple of years and you may be able to turn your heating down a notch or two.
Before houses had water pipes, bathing took place in the warmest room of the house – the kitchen. Water could be heated on the stove and poured in to a basic tin tub, and everyone would generally use the same bath water – and then laundry would be done in it last.
They hibernated, according to fossil experts. Evidence from bones found at one of the world's most important fossil sites suggests that our hominid predecessors may have dealt with extreme cold hundreds of thousands of years ago by sleeping through the winter.
In addition to keeping active, people wore thick layers of woolen clothing and often slept in them along with flannel night shirts and caps on the coldest nights. Most people, including the wealthy, went to bed in unheated bed chambers.
Nowadays we can stay indoors, pop on an extra layer or snuggle under a blanket when we're chilly in the winter, but how did prehistoric humans stay warm? Well, a new study has revealed the earliest Homo sapiens used bear skin to help them stay cosy in the harsh winters.
In the Victorian era the public would typically fall asleep at 7pm when the sun disappeared, however this dramatically moved to 10pm in the Edwardian era, finally settling at 12pm in the modern age. Although our bedtime has become later throughout the years, we've continued to wake up around a similar time.
Beds were typically made of a dark wood such as mahogany or rosewood with a matching style of headboard and footboard, with an iron frame and wooden slats forming the structure and support of the mattress and often borrowing a French style.
Perhaps the creepiest of these peculiar Victorian sleeping arrangements, for those too poor to have a fixed place to sleep, were the four or five penny coffins. Thankfully they weren't actually coffins. Instead they were small wooden boxes that bore a striking and unpleasant resemblance to coffins.
Those who were able to afford a “comfortable” shelter were fortunate to have homes that were heated by coal-burning furnaces. These were often located in the basement of homes, close to an outside wall where coal could be fed directly into the furnace via a stoker.
The skill of ice skating was necessary for winter survival and travel. With many of the lakes and water frozen in the areas of the Northmen, it was popular for people to ice skate, and it became a spectator sport, a way to have fun in the cold.
By heating the stones as well as the chamber, and directing the smoke away from the room, these fireplaces made life in a medieval castle a considerably more comfortable affair.