My parents grew up in working class 1950s Britain. My dad’s parents slept in the kitchen (with a curtain round the bed for privacy), which was also the room that most “living” was done. The three kids shared a single small room, with both teenage boys sharing a double bed, their older sister got her own single bed, and she stayed there until she married and moved out in her early twenties. I remember seeing that room and even as a child it seemed cramped, no space really for anything else once the two beds were in it.

While the whole the family was living, eating and sleeping in two small room, an immaculate “front room” / parlour was kept solely for the two or three days a year where they had “company” (a family event like a wedding or funeral, or the priest visiting or something). The front room was bigger than both the others. It’s hard to comprehend the priorities that led to this sort of thing, but it was apparently extremely common in that time and place.