Tuesday, June 27, 2006

old fashioned values


ot that long ago, most houses in Britain didn't have an indoor toilet. This was partly the result of large quantities of low-quality terraced housing built before 1914. Most of this housing stock has now either been extended to include a bathroom or demolished. There have been waves of such demolition, alternating with refurbishment. Sometimes the refurbishement costs more than the resulting housing is worth, and sometimes the destruction of established communities is realised to be a hidden cost.

Justification for the current phase of demolition, at least in Stoke-on-Trent, is that people no longer want terraced housing. They skip over the traditional first rung on the housing ladder and go straight to a modern suburban semi-detached house. This means that it is not worthwhile for owners of the terraced property to invest in the maintenance of their houses so the buildings are left to deteriorate. It is then uneconomic for government intervention to refurbish, and so they are cleared.

Given the ridiculous increase in house prices, however, which are still on the rise in this part of the country at least, it won't be long before first time buyers will wish that there was still that traditional first rung.

None of the above is new or original. What's brought it to mind, though, is the replacement of the bathroom suite in our terraced house this week. The task took twice as long as expected, due to various complications from the age of the house (lathe and plaster walls, old and no-longer-standard floorboards etc).

We were therefore lucky that by some quirk there are two feeds from the mains water supply, so we at least had cold water in the kitchen sink while the work was carried out. Jason the plumber worked well in the adverse conditions, but Lisa decided to clear out the junk stored in the outside toilet and restore it to working order.

The old coat of whitewash is flaking off the walls, and many surprised and probably offended spiders had to move out, but I'm glad that we've had this brief reminder of what life must have been like for many people for many years - no light, no heat, no sink. I'm also glad it's not the middle of winter.

0 Comments:

Post a Comment

<< Home