A retired gas engineer has lived in the same house since 1948 and never touched or altered it. Doug Bethel, 89, still lives in the house he grew up in with his parents and six siblings after they bought the five-bedroom semi-detached terraced house 72 years ago for just £800. The former navy seaman never started a family of his own as he was often away at sea but returned to live with his mum and dad in Liverpool, Merseyside, until they passed in 1976 and 1988.
Determined to keep as many happy memories in the house as he can, Doug hasn’t altered anything in the house for over 60 years which still has his childhood bedroom intact, the original kitchen and cooker and no central heating - using only coal fires to heat the place until last year. Doug said: “The bedrooms are still the same as what they were when we were kids, and we’ve got all the original doors, ceilings and floors that came with the house when we bought it. My parents changed the wallpaper but apart from that they barely touched it either.
“It was only 10 years ago that we had the electrics changed from the old plugs that we’d had since 1950 to the modern system with the three prong sockets you see today. We’ve still got some of the old two prong sockets dotted about. A lot of the furniture is very old and mostly are my parents’ wedding presents like the chairs and clothes drying rack.
I still use their wedding knife to cut loaves of bread. “The best times of our lives were the 50s when I was gr.