I've seen a couple of questions relating to this but not one that
really answers my question.

I have a 105 year old house - stone foundations and basement which has
a 5 1/5 ft - 6ft ceiling so really never going to be finished out.

The basement contains our furnace and a hot water heater and the rest
is pretty well just used for storage. The floor above is simply
hardwood floors - pretty old stuff which small gaps etc. that you can
see down to the basement. The house seems to cool down very quickly
when the heat goes off and the floor remains fairly cool to the touch
making the downstairs rather unappealing in the winter.

I suspect insulating the ceiling in the basement will help slow down
the loss of heat in the room a bit - the basement is closed off to the
direct outside - no open vents or anything like that.

If I want to use fibreglass insulation on the ceiling between the joist
s - do I really need to put a vapor barrier in and if I do I do not
want to have fibreglass exposed.

I suppose what I'm saying is if I get faced fibreglass batts and put
them in so paper side is out rather than against the floor - it will
conceal the fibreglass. But it would mean that the paper which I
think is a vapor barrier is on the wrong side.

As the furnace is down there it provides a degree of residual heat -and
have not noticed condensation forming down there last winter.
Is this a good idea ?