Cisterns

I had lunch today with some friends in a vegetarian restaurant north of the Barbican, a rather odd place, as it had very plain pine tables and chairs, like a caff, but linen napkins and a bread basket. Anyway, the food was good and the house wine was organic, but none of that is the point of this post.
After the meal I went to use the toilet and it was amazing. A tiny room, more like a corridor, no more than three feet wide and very long, with one wall being an old blackened brick wall which gave it something of the air of a grotto, the effect being heightened by a dark basin and white flowers. What spoiled it was the plastic low-level cistern, when what the room needed was an old cast-iron high-level one with a chain.
I can't remember the last time I saw a high-level cistern with a chain (or even with a length of string, which I recall as being quite common in public toilets where I suppose the chains had been stolen). Is this another piece of my childhood that has disappeared into history? Would modern day children look askance at being asked, as my mother never failed to ask me, "Did you pull the chain?"