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I really don't know that much about what they did in the UK. I always thought children there grew up watching Hammer films just like we did in the US.
In Pennsylvania, they showed the horror films during the kiddie matinee. Back in those days, kids went to the matinee by themselves. There'd be nary an adult in the whole theater. Oh the noise and the mess! I first saw Christopher Lee at a kiddie matinee, Dracula Has Risen From the Grave. I was about 10. It wasn't censored that I'm aware of. Lots of gore and buxom women.
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I suppose it all goes back to the different British and American attitudes regarding 'sex' and 'violence.' 'Sex' has always been the greater taboo on this side of the Atlantic -- and American films wallow in violence. However, in the UK, the priorites of what was deemed objectionable were reversed. Although, the American attempt to ban horror comics as being dangerous to children, in the 1950s, somewhat contradicts what I just said. Then, again, maybe, comics were seen as being a purely 'children's' medium, as opposed to film. In any case, the message was the same: "Horror is bad for kids."
Moreover, the objection to horror films that one usually heard in the UK and Europe wasn't that they were 'infantile' or 'childish,' but that they were 'pornographic.' Which is to say, catering to a low taste for cheap titilation -- in this case, of a bloody variety. And that the people who frequented horror movies were as 'sick,' in their way, as people who went to 'blue movies.'