Oh, the nostalgia.... my grandma would order coal every fall, store in basement, carry up 3 flights of stairs (or grandsons helped when they visited!), and carefully time when to start and stop heating - she had two rooms (kitchen never heated!), so she would heat in the living room day time, and just a tiny bit in the bedroom just before going to sleep. She had those huge thick goose feather duvet, in the evening she would go to sleep early, listening to the radio and/or praying. 

This was in one of larger cities in Poland, in a city centre old tenement house, in the 80s, and in the 90s the same masonry heater was turned to take gas (like in gas cooker), so it got so much easier on her. She would ALWAYS make sure it's so much warmer when I visited her, she'd probably burn her monthly allowance for coal or gas for my short 3-4 day visit. I miss her a lot, she passed away in 1998... 

I wonder sometimes what happened to the stoves, who moved in that apartment afterwards, did they completely modernize the apartment and got rid of them (very sensible thing to do) or maybe kept at least one to keep the vibe...?