Pre-regulation terraced houses in the United Kingdom

A pre-regulation terraced house is a terraced house built before 1875 Public Health Act in the United Kingdom usually in the period 1775 to 1875. It is an urban house-type built to house the poor. The 1875 Public Health Act imposed a duty on local authorities to regulate housing by the use of byelaws, and subsequently all byelaw terraced housing was required meet minimum, standards of build quality, ventilation, sanitation and population density.[1]

Almost all housing of this type has been demolished through successive waves of slum clearance.

History

A one-up one-down 1830s through house in Green Lane, St Margarets, Leicester.[2]

Between 1801 and 1901 the population increased fourfold, and during this period there was a migration from the land into towns, as the nature of work changed. In effect urban population increased tenfold, and there was a need to build houses for the urban worker. Employers built rows of back-to-back and through houses on the ground available. In older towns they were constrained by the mediaeval street patterns and the need to fit as many houses as possible on the traditional long plots.[3] The less fortunate lived in single roomed houses facing onto a communal courtyard where there were privies, a cesspit, a standpipe, and consequently high infant mortality, typhus and cholera.

The influx started in around 1820 as steam or water power was successfully harnessed to drive the machines, and to produce the iron and steel to build the machines. More workers were attracted in from the countryside to tend the machines and a large number of dwellings were required in short order. Water powered mills were built next to rivers and the housing next to the mills in the floodable low-lying ground. The particles from smoke from the steam engines boilers descended and wrapped the adjacent house in a layer of grime. The workers were unskilled and poor. so could pay little rent. Even so, their families were large, and spare space would be used to take in lodgers.[4] The rural migrants preferred employment in the city to the lack of employment where they were born. Accompanying the industrial revolution, there was one in the countryside as agriculture was mechanised. The medieval system of guaranteed shared land was being replaced by larger farms with tied cottages for the few employed labourers.

In 1845 there was a further influx of rural immigrants to the city, as penniless Irish migrants came to the United Kingdom to escape from the Irish potato famine. Seeking work, they too lodged in these houses.[4]

Edwin Chadwick's report on The Sanitary Condition of the Labouring Population (1842),[5] researched and published at his own expense, highlighted the problems. Action was taken to introduce building control regulations. Specific boards of health were given the power to regulate housing standard in the 1848 Public Health Act and the 1858 Local government Act. These culminated in the 1875 Public Health Act.

1875 Public Health Act

In 1875, the Public Health Act was introduced. It required urban authorities to make byelaws for new streets, to ensure structural stability of houses and prevent fires, and to provide for the drainage of buildings and the provision of air space around buildings.[6] Section 57 determined that all houses must be through houses. Three years later the Building Act of 1878 provided more detail with constructions- they defined foundations, damp proof courses, thickness of walls, ceiling heights, space between dwellings, under floor ventilation, ventilation of rooms, size of windows. The Local Government Board, established in 1871, issued the first Model Bye-laws in 1877/78.[7] Urban authorities either adopted them, or wrote their own versions adapted to local conditions. By 1930 when the first slum clearance measures were introduced there was a marked contrast between the residual stock of pre-regulation houses and the newer byelaw houses. The lack of the provisions above had caused the pre-regulation house to physically deteriorate, the pre-regulation house commanded a far lower rent. It provided accommodation for the very poorest but was still closer to the sources of employment eliminating transport to work costs.[8]

Design and construction

A typical courtyard for 14 families in the Jewellery Quarter Birmingham

The standard four roomed two storey cottage at this time would by 13 feet (4.0 m) by 13 feet (4.0 m), and would be built in a terrace behind a house that fronted onto the street. It would be reached through a covered ginnel (entry) leading to passage between the houses. The Entry would usually be 2 feet 9 inches (0.84 m) wide. [4] These were the back-dwellings.

A 3 storey Birmingham back-to-back, with the wall of the adjoining factory

Alternatively, they were built round a blue brick paved common yard draining to a central channel. The number of houses was undefined, but all would share the water pump and the four privies built in the yard. The water was pumped from a well on site, and the privies drained to a deep, regularly emptied, cesspit also on site. The size of the cottage was important, as shortage of land and the need to minimise building cost were paramount. Every town approached the situation differently. Liverpool and Birmingham developed a pattern of 3 storey back-to-back cottages with a cellar, Nottingham had the reputation for having the smallest houses, while Leicester whose maximum growth peaked a little later was less cramped, had through houses and higher ceilings. [9]

A two-room cottage could be as small as 10 feet (3.0 m) by 10 feet (3.0 m), the narrow steep stair would align with the side or back wall. The heating would be an open coal fired cast-iron cooking range in the living room, and maybe a cast-iron 'register grate'[lower-alpha 1] in the bedroom. [9]

Though the ground floor might have had a boarded wooden floor, more likely the cheapest houses would have had stone flags laid on compacted ash much in the manner of the scullery floor after regulation. This had advantages but in low lying district, it would remain permanently damp. The upper floors would have been of wooden planks laid on joists, in poorer house there would be no plastered ceiling. Walls may have been plastered or not. A slate damp proof course was not unknown but regularly there was none. After poor weather, or flooding the walls never could dry out. [7]

Eradication

In general these house were unhealthy, shoddy, jerry-built and the rental income achieved was far too low to enable even maintenance never mind improvement. The successive waves of slum clearance such as in Ancoats and Hulme razed the houses, but merely re-located the problem. [11]

References

Footnotes

  1. ↑ A register grate was made principally from a single casting, but it had a openable panel in front of the flue that could regulate the up-draught of air and control the speed of the coal burn and thus the heat [10]

Notes

  1. ↑ Rosenfeld, Allen & Okoro 2011, p. 258.
  2. ↑ Calow 2007, p. 97.
  3. ↑ Brunskill 2000, p. 186.
  4. 1 2 3 Calow 2007, p. 6.
  5. ↑ Chadwick, Edwin (1842). "Chadwick's Report on Sanitary Conditions". excerpt from Report...from the Poor Law Commissioners on an Inquiry into the Sanitary Conditions of the Labouring Population of Great Britain (pp.369–372) (online source). added by Laura Del Col: to The Victorian Web. Retrieved 8 November 2009.
  6. ↑ Calow 2007, p. 13.
  7. 1 2 UWE 2009.
  8. ↑ Calow 2007, pp. 21,22.
  9. 1 2 Calow 2007, p. 8.
  10. ↑ Tyrell-Lewis (2014). "Register grates". Bricks and Brass. Tyrell Lewis. Retrieved 22 December 2015.
  11. ↑ Parkinson-Bailey 2000, p. 156.

Bibliography

Primary source

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