this post was submitted on 15 Sep 2026
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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.