Call
me old fashioned, but I do like the terraced house. In fact, I have done some research that I
hope you will find of interest my Warminster property market blog reading
friends!
In
architecture terms, a terraced or townhouse is a style of housing in use since the
late 1600’s in the UK, where a row of symmetrical / identical houses share
their side walls. The first terraced houses were actually built by a French man,
Monsieur Barbon around St. Paul’s Cathedral within the rebuilding process after
the Great Fire of London in 1666. Interestingly, it was the French that invented
the terraced house around 1610-15 in the Le Marais district of Paris with its planned squares and
properties with identical facades. However, it was the 1730’s in the UK, that
the terraced/townhouse came into its own in London and of course in Bath with the
impressive Royal Crescent.
However,
we are in Warminster, not Bath, so the majority of our Warminster terraced
houses were built in the Victorian era. Built
on the back of the Industrial Revolution, with people flooding into the towns
and cities for work in Victorian times, the terraced house offered decent
livable accommodation away from the slums. An interesting fact is that the
majority of Victorian Warminster terraced houses are based on standard design
of a ‘posh’ front room, a back room (where the family lived day to day) and
scullery off that. Off the scullery, a
door to a rear yard, whilst upstairs, three bedrooms (the third straight off
the second). Interestingly, the law was
changed in 1875 with the Public Health Act and each house had to have 108ft of
livable space per main room, running water, it’s own outside toilet and rear
access to allow the toilet waste to be collected (they didn’t have public
sewers in those days in Warminster – well not at least where these ‘workers’ terraced
houses were built).
It
was the 1960’s and 70’s where inside toilets and bathrooms were installed
(often in that third bedroom or an extension off the scullery) and gas central
heating in the 1980’s and replacement Upvc double glazing ever since.
Looking
at the make up of all the properties in Warminster, some very interesting
numbers appear. Of the 8,083 properties
in Warminster …
2,180
are Detached properties (26.9%)
2,374
are Semi Detached properties (33.8%)
1,939
are Terraced / Town House properties (23.9%)
1,164
are Apartment/ Flat’s (14.4%)
And
quite noteworthy, there are 66 mobile homes, representing 0.8% of all property
in Warminster.
When
it comes to values, the average price paid for a Warminster terraced house in
1995 was £53,860 and the latest set of figures released by the land Registry
states that today that figure stands at £164,300, a rise of 205% - not bad when
you consider detached properties in Warminster in the same time frame have only
risen by 106%.
But
then a lot of buy to let landlords and first time buyers I speak to think the
Victorian terraced house is expensive to maintain. I recently read a report from English Heritage
that stated maintaining a typical Victorian terraced house over thirty years is
around sixty percent cheaper than building and maintaining a modern house- which
is quite fascinating don’t you think!
