In the north of England there are many houses, indeed whole streets, which have fallen into neglect and ruin for many reasons (see link) including depopulation and people’s desire to live in more upmarket housing. It appears that many of those “Coronation Street” style back-to-backs are likely to be demolished. Why waste this valuable housing stock? Many country cottages today are in fact two or more hovels knocked together. Why not do the same with terraces? Two, three or more pokey two-up two-downs could be knocked together to create spacious comfortable, if a little quirky, living quarters and would exude the cosy charm of a Hovis advert.-- Gordon Comstock, Apr 30 2003 The problem http://news.bbc.co....uk_news/2136114.stm [Gordon Comstock, Oct 17 2004] Some relatives of mine live in 4 16th century cottages which have been converted into one dwelling - not quite what you're describing, but similar. One side-effect is that you still get fairly small rooms and low ceilings.The problem with converting the houses you describe is that because of their location no house built where they are is going to be worth very much, so even if you cut costs by converting multiple houses into one (as opposed to rebuilding) the resale price will be lower than your costs.-- hippo, Apr 30 2003 [hippo] I'd agree with you if you were to just create one such house in a run-down terrace. But if several roads were all converted like this, you could rejuvenateve the area as has been done in the docks in Manchester and Newcastle. As these houses were built for workers, they are often in good locations in relation to other renewed factories, mills etc which have since been converted to offices and the like.-- Gordon Comstock, Apr 30 2003 was 'Help' the Beatles first film? I believe they half-baked this in one scene.
No, 'Hard Days Night' - one of them anyway.-- po, Apr 30 2003 It would be cool if you could keep the original numbers - "Yeah, I live at 16 - 22 King St".-- sild, Apr 30 2003 There have been attempts to merge adjacent houses in the UK that failed in the sense that the owner still had to pay council tax for each house.-- Aristotle, Apr 30 2003 I supppose it depends on the area. The terrace houses round where i come from are actually bigger than the new houses being thrown up by mr. barret and friends everywhere. They also have walls made of brick and not plaster board and more spacious rooms with higher ceilings. I like this idea a lot as I would rather eat a turd than live in one of those new "des reses". Another difference between the new houses and the terraces is that you can get hold of a terrace for under 30 grand and you wont get a sniff at a new one for under 70.-- squeak, Apr 30 2003 Also, in my home town, many of the terraces are v. near the town centre. As far as I know, there is no problem with them being uninhabited. Far from it in fact.-- squeak, Apr 30 2003 As po vaguely remembers, famously Baked in "Help!"
My suspicion is that the construction quality is probably just too poor to make it worth keeping the building shells, whatever you do to the insides. My family fought a constant battle with rising damp: even though we installed proper ventilation and a damp-proof course, the damp would seep over from the neighbour's houses. And we had a double brick cavity wall - many terrace houses have only single thickness walls.
Having said that, I am very much in favor of urban renewal, so croissant.-- DrCurry, Apr 30 2003 - pokey: desciptive of cramped, possibly gloomy space.- two-up, two-down: traditional small terraced house with two rooms upstairs and two rooms downstairs (and an outside loo), built between about 1880 and 1914 in vast numbers in the UK.-- hippo, Apr 30 2003 Oh, Oh, the Hokey Pokey-- po, Apr 30 2003 Suggested Category - Public: Architecture: House-- friendlyfire, Apr 30 2003 I certainly applaud the intent. But this isn't exactly a new and revolutionary halfbakery sort of idea, as I see it. This kind of thing is commonly done. You just want them to do it there.-- waugsqueke, Apr 30 2003 random, halfbakery