this post was submitted on 15 Sep 2026
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Well, knocking on doors is some 19th century tech level stuff, so Charles Dickens is actually really fitting.
I personally don't know of a single house/apartment around my home that doesn't have some form of electrical bell.
Is this some British cultural thing not having door bells?
I'm not sure I believe you've never knocked on a door.
Lots of British doors have a knocker or nothing, yes. But doorbells are common too.
Interesting, quite different from the parts of Germany that I have lived in.
Some houses still have (mostly historic) knockers, but everyone knows they are just ornamental and nobody would think about actually using them (but would look for the bell button instead).
I live in the USA, and I used to deliver food. I would always use people’s knockers if their door had them. 9/10 times they were like “what the hell is that sound? Ohhh the knocker! I’ve lived here X years and no one’s ever used that before!” became probably my favorite part of an otherwise boring job 😂
Lol.
I can totally imagine that happening here exactly like that!
No sane person would even consider using the metal thing on the door, except perhaps for master real-life trolls like you clearly are! :-)
In Germany though most accommodation is in flats, right? Even if in smallish blocks rather than high-rises... I wouldn't expect those to have knockers...
No, it's not just the flats.
I grew up and lived in many rural area were the towns consisted of tightly packed, often very old town houses (predating the arrival of electricity by decades or centuries).
Basically no multi-apartment buildings at all.
Still every house had an electrical bell. No exception.
That's the reason I am so flabbergasted to hear this to apparently be different in the UK.
It comes completely unexpected to me, I always considered having at least one doorbell at every house's entrance to be a given. Like having windows or a drainpipe. Standard feature.
UK has the oldest housing stock in Europe apparently
The house my parents live in is... about 120 years old iirc. There is a doorbell though.
I am from Germany, which also has some ancient building stock.
The town houses in the area in which I grew up typically are between 100 and 200 years old, some even much older.
All had an electric bell retrofitted.
Hence the name of the game consequently was "Klingelmännchen", which is hard to translate, as English is missing a diminutive word form.
Best translation is something like "little bell man".
So I am surprised that door-knockers are still a widespread thing in Britain, as someone mentioned in another comment.
Guess it really is some cultural thing.
I guess it is down to type of housing. UK built a lot of terraced houses, whereas Europe built apartments. Apartments need a bell system?
Older houses have cast iron knockers and are seen as attractive features, which I guess is the same everywhere.
It must be more than just the apartments.
I was raised in a rural area with only single-family houses and a practically nonexistent apartment percentage, and also typically very old buildings, most predating the availability of electricity by decades or centuries.
Still every house had an electric bell.
Maybe in Germany at some point there was a widespread excitement for the new technology, making it the expected standard early on, while the Brits valued their traditions more?
I guess so. I grew up in the country and never had a doorbell on any of our houses. New builds did have bells, and the big posh houses had old mechanical bells. I remember one having internal bells in each room that would ring the kitchen to get staff help.