To heat or not to heat? To stay warm and run up an extortionate fuel bill, or to search out sturdy underpinnings and layer up like a trussed Victorian? These are the questions being forced upon us by the increase in energy prices that will slap 25 per cent on the cost of heating this winter.

There is another question too, and it comes to mind when you cast your mind back to your childhood, or to your parents' childhood. Why, in the space of not much more than 50 years, have we gone from accepting that one coal fire provided a suburban semi with an adequate level of heating, to wandering round in T-shirts in December insisting that anything less than a constant 25C is freezing?

The answer is multifaceted. Its root lies in consumerism, in the steady improvement in the British standard of living that would make the Ministry of Housing edicts of 1961 seem quaint had they not been designed to stop people dying from cold. That was when the Parker Morris Standards decreed that dwellings should be fitted with heating systems that maintain the kitchen and circulation space at 13C, and the living and dining spaces at 18C when the external temperature is minus 1C.

By 1968 it was recognised that comfort was necessary for productivity, the notion of humanitarian needs was acknowledged, and with that the desirable background temperature rose to 20C. And as employees found their work places warming up, they wanted homes that matched. By 1972 6.5 million central heating systems had been installed and there was interest in double glazing and other forms of insulation.

Times Archive, 1940: Gas central heating systems

Women! Make your home winter-proof now and help to win the war

All this was linked to the explosion of hire purchase and easy credit, says Dr Peter Gurney, who lectures in history at the University of Essex. “Even 50 years ago hire purchase was surrounded by stigma.” At the same time there was a philosophical drive behind the change. “It's to do with avoidance of pain and the maximisation of pleasure,” he says. “We expect instant gratification and with the shift away from living with scarcity, or according to necessity, that's become a benchmark of success and a basic human right in modern Western capitalist society.

“There's a link too with the decline in organised religion - a bit of suffering was seen to be a good thing morally, it gave people backbone and that was what was expected. Whereas today there is no agenda other than to maximise our pleasure through our consumption habits and practices. We have a generation of people who have no idea of privation, of what it is to go without and to them the idea that they can't have it easy is anathema. Of course it's fashionable to talk about ethical consumption but it seems to me that's not much more than a veneer. When it comes to turning down the heating that strikes a bit too close to home.”

For the comfortable generation it will be unremarkable that 93.3 per cent of British homes now have central heating and that in 2004 the average temperature was assessed by the Energy Saving Trust (EST) at 18C, six degrees higher than in 1970. It is significant that these are average figures - British Gas recommends 21C as a suitable household temperature, but then they would, wouldn't they? The EST responds by pointing out that turning down the thermostat by 1 degree can save £50 a year in a three-bedroomed semi.

Sherri Steel is the curator of social history at the Castle Museum in York, which specialises in the study of everyday life. She believes that we keep our homes toasty simply because we can, because until now fuel has been relatively cheap, and because warmth is a more pleasant sensation than cold.

She says: “It's easy to say you can go without, we're soft now, but people did suffer from the cold and winter was anticipated with some dread. Central heating is convenient, you just flick a switch, and once you can do that, habits change. We heat the whole house now because families no longer congregate in one room, they're scattered throughout the house doing different activities. I don't see people going back to being sewn into their vests at the beginning of winter.”

A chill reminder to use energy more wisely

Newcomers to Britain often complain about our freezing homes, but may be unaware that our ambivalent attitude to insulation follows a stubborn tradition. In cold climates - where there are no “cold spells”, only long and bitter winters - the open fire was simply not enough to heat a whole house so many had energy-efficient stoves. But the British loved their hearths, the cheerful centre of family life and, it was commonly assumed, an excellent source of ventilation.

Whereas Eastern European and Russian cultures believe that cold air causes illness, the British fear stuffiness. Up until the 1880s, with the emergence of Germ Theory, we believed that disease was transmitted miasmatically, that bad smells were poisonous. As late as 1946, a report linked warm rooms with ill-health and decreed that the “ideal” was 18.3C - 7.7C lower than the ideal in offices in Japan. In the 1950s, central heating was dismissed in Britain as “hygienic decadence”.

Colder nations are more resourceful with energy. For centuries the Swedes built houses of wood (a natural insulator) above stables so that the heat from the livestock would rise. And while Britain built badly insulated terraced housing in Victorian times, apartment blocks were rising in Russia, Germany and Northern Europe - often heated with surplus energy from power plants which explains why apartments in Moscow can be uncomfortably warm even in winter. In Britain, Fidler's Ferry power station produces enough heat to supply Liverpool. Where does it go? Straight into the atmosphere.

The first laws on insulation standards in 1976 were a sop to the building industry - wall-cavity insulation was not set as standard. Heating is seen as the responsibility of the individual, unlike in, say, Marburg, Germany, where a so-called “green dictatorship” has made solar heating obligatory.

But different nationalities are not more sensitive to cold. A study in the 1970s by the Danish environmentalist Povl Ole Fanger found no difference - and no difference between men and women. Britons feel comfortable in colder houses because they are content to wear two jumpers, extra socks and a cardigan.

Stefanie Marsh

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