A House Through Time Read online

  A House

  Through

  Time

  DAVID OLUSOGA &

  MELANIE BACKE-HANSEN

  CONTENTS

  LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

  INTRODUCTION

  The Changing Idea of the Home

  CHAPTER ONE: WHERE TO START?

  Deeds, Documents, and Archives

  CHAPTER TWO: BRITAIN’S EARLY HOMES

  Towns and Villages Before the Georgian Age

  CHAPTER THREE: THE GEORGIAN HOME

  The Birth of the Modern City

  CHAPTER FOUR: THE VICTORIAN CITY

  A Tale of Two Nations

  CHAPTER FIVE: THE DEVIL’S ACRE

  The Crisis of the Slums

  CHAPTER SIX: LIFE AT ‘THE LAURELS’

  The Victorian Suburbs

  CHAPTER SEVEN: A HOME IN SUBURBIA

  The Expanding Middle Class

  CHAPTER EIGHT: HOMES FOR HEROES

  A Semi-Detached Britain

  CHAPTER NINE: THE WAR IS OVER

  The Age of Austerity to the Renovation Boom

  CONCLUSION

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  RESOURCES AND BIBLIOGRAPHY

  INDEX

  PLATE SECTION

  List of Illustrations

  PLATE SECTION

  Charles Booth’s poverty map: Lisson Grove, Paddington, 1902. Antiqua Print Gallery/Alamy Stock Photo.

  Borough of Liverpool Mortality Map of Typhus, 1865. Wellcome Collection. Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0).

  Bristol Bomb Plot Map, 1940–44. Bristol Archives: 33779/8.

  Nicholas Barbon. The History Collection/Alamy Stock Photo.

  Cruck House, Stowe, Lichfield. Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 3.0.

  Portrait of Inigo Jones, circa 1757–1758. Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.

  Sir John Kerle Haberfield, 1845 or 1846 (oil on canvas). Parkman, Henry Spurrier (1814–64) / Bristol Museum and Art Gallery, UK / Lent by the Diocese of Bristol, circa 1973/Bridgeman Images.

  Covent Garden piazza and market in 1737, looking west towards St Paul’s Church, by Balthazar Nebot. Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.

  Royal York Crescent, Clifton, Bristol. Sue Martin/Shutterstock.com.

  Georgian home with bricked-up window in Ampthill, Bedfordshire. Reproduced by permission of Fiona and Andrew Challacombe.

  Birkenhead Iron Works by Andrew Maclure. 1857 print of the new shipyard of Lairds Brothers, as Cammell Laird was then known. Reproduced by permission of the Wirral Archives Service and the Williamson Art Gallery.

  Traditional terraced brick houses in Dublin, Ireland. georgeclerk/iStockphoto.

  Outside privy of a Birmingham back-to-back. The National Trust Photo Library/Alamy Stock Photo.

  The Devil’s Acre, Westminster, by Gustave Doré. Lanmas/Alamy Stock Photo.

  Brick-built houses in the mill town of Saltaire, Yorkshire. Reprinted by permission of Amanda Newman.

  The Peabody Wild Street estate in Drury Lane, London in the early 1900s and in 2014. Reprinted by permission of Peabody, London.

  A Georgian terrace in Bath. Harshil Shah/Flickr.com.

  Elizabeth Gaskell’s house in Plymouth Grove, Manchester. Wozzie/Shutterstock.com.

  Emmeline Pankhurst’s home in Nelson Street, Manchester, now home to the Pankhurst Centre. Kurt Adkins, Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 3.0.

  H. G. Wells’ house in Maybury Road, Woking, Surrey. Michael Pearcy/Alamy Stock Photo.

  Letchworth Garden City, 1912. Topical Press Agency/Stringer/GettyImages.

  Wavertree Garden Suburb, Liverpool, 1911. Image courtesy of Mike Chitty, The Wavertree Society.

  Housing on Old Oak Estate, Acton. Arcaid Images/Alamy Stock Photo.

  Kitchen of a prefab house, Avoncroft Museum, Bromsgrove, Worcestershire. travelibUK/Alamy Stock Photo.

  Ronan Point, Canning Town, after the explosion. Trinity Mirror/Mirrorpix/Alamy Stock Photo.

  Portrait of Joshua Alder. Reproduced by permission of the Natural History Society of Northumbria, Great North Museum: Hancock.

  Ravensworth Terrace, Newcastle, as a Salvation Army Goodwill Centre. Reproduced by permission of Pauline Anderson.

  Ravensworth Terrace, Newcastle, today. © BBC Photo Library.

  Rosina Curley and baby. Reproduced by permission of Jean Chamberlain.

  1 and 2 Guinea Street in 1952. National Building Record Report by P. E. W. Street. Bristol Archives: 20894/55.

  10 Guinea Street, Bristol, today. Reproduced by permission of Karen Drake.

  Liverpool sisters in 62 Falkner Street, Liverpool. © Nick Hedges.

  62 Falkner Street, Liverpool, today. Reproduced by permission of Danny Leitch/Twenty Twenty.

  TEXT ILLUSTRATIONS

  An early map of the Moss Lake Fields area, Liverpool. Reprinted by permission of the Liverpool Record Office, Liverpool Libraries.

  Charles Booth. Wellcome Collection, Attribution 4.0 International (CC by 4.0).

  Bombing in St John’s Lane, Bristol. © David Facey, Bristol Archives: Facey Collection:41969/1/46.

  Grace Eagle with her children Leonora and Henry. Reproduced by permission of Jane Stupples.

  1939 National Register for 10 Guinea Street. Reproduced by permission of The National Archives.

  Birth, marriage, and death certificates. GRO Crown Copyright.

  Florence Smyth. Reproduced by permission of Pauline Anderson.

  A medieval fireplace and chimney. Chronicle/Alamy Stock Photo.

  Sir Christopher Wren’s plan for rebuilding the City of London after the Great Fire of 1666. Alpha Stock/Alamy Stock Photo.

  Nicholas Barbon’s house in Buckingham Street, London. Wikimedia Commons, Paul the Archivist, CC BY-SA 4.0.

  Cromford Mill. Reproduced by permission of Dan Newman.

  Georgian terrace designs. Image courtesy Survey of London, Bartlett School of Architecture/UCL.

  Plans of a first-rate property on the Grosvenor estate in Mayfair. Image courtesy Survey of London, Bartlett School of Architecture/UCL.

  Love Laughs at Locksmiths, after Thomas Rowlandson. Classic Image/Alamy Stock Photo.

  The will of Jonas Wilton Glenton. Reproduced by permission of Lancashire Archives, Lancashire County Council.

  The Pipewellgate district of Gateshead by the High Level Bridge, dated circa 1879. Reproduced by permission of Newcastle City Library.

  Back-to-back houses in Stanley Terrace, Leeds. By kind permission of Leeds Libraries, www.leodis.net.

  The interior of a back-to-back house. The National Trust Photo Library/Alamy Stock Photo.

  A sunless court in Liverpool in 1911. The Print Collector/Alamy Stock Photo.

  An 1866 cartoon indicating water pollution as a source of disease. Granger Historical Picture Archive/Alamy Stock Photo.

  Over London By Rail by Gustave Doré, 1872. Everett Collection Historical/Alamy Stock Photo.

  Map of Newcastle and Gateshead in 1830. Reproduced by permission of Newcastle City Library.

  Map of Newcastle and Gateshead in 1849. Reproduced by permission of Newcastle City Library.

  St Giles Rookery, London. Chronicle/Alamy Stock Photo.

  Prince Albert’s Model Cottage for the Great Exhibition of 1851. Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.

  ‘The Laurels’, Brickfield Terrace, Holloway from The Diary of a Nobody. Original illustrations by Weedon Grossmith.

  Designs for Marble Hill House by Lord Herbert and Roger Morris, 1724–29. Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.

  The Crescent Gate entrance to Victoria Park, Manchester. Photographed by Helmut Petschler. Reproduced by permission of Bruce Anderson, rusholmearhive.org.

  Emmeline Pankhurst, 1913. Photographed by Chicago Matzen, restored by Adam Cuerden, from the Library of Congress. Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.

  George Shillibeer’s first omnibus. Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.

  A horse-drawn tram in Liverpool in the 1890s. Reprinted by permission of Liverpool Record Office, Liverpool Libraries.

  Mr Pooter painting his servant’s washstand: illustration from The Diary of a Nobody. Original illustration by Weedon Grossmith.

  The prototype semi-detached mansion at Porchester Terrace in Bayswater, London, designed by John Claudius Loudon. Illustration from The Suburban Gardener and Villa Companion, published in 1838.

  A typical suburban semi-detached home of the 1890s. Chronicle/Alamy Stock Photo.

  H. G. Wells, circa 1890. Picture taken by Frederick Hollyer. Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.

  Council houses at Sea Mills, Bristol, in 1949. Paul Townsend/Flickr CC BY-ND 2.0.

  An unidentified woman demonstrating the use of an electric iron circa 1913–14 (b/w photo), Hassler, William Davis (1877-1921) / Collection of the New-York Historical Society, USA/Bridgeman Images.

  1935 UK Magazine Ruislip House advert. John Frost Newspapers/Alamy Stock Photo.

  Osbert Lancaster’s cartoon featuring ‘Stockbroker Tudor’. By permission of Clare Hastings.

  A prefab house in 1945. Pictorial Press Ltd/Alamy Stock Photo.

  The Prime Minister Harold Macmillan visiting Stevenage New Town. Reproduced by permission of Stevenage Museum.

  St Cuthbert’s Village, Gateshead. Reprinted by permission of the Northumberland and Newcastle Society.

  Houses in Falkner Street, Liverpool before demolition. © Nick Hedges.

  INTRODUCTION

  The Changing Idea of the Home

  When we move into
a new house we instantly set about stamping our tastes and our identities on to it. We redecorate, we arrange our furniture and our books, the collected volumes that we hope say something about us and our lives. This, and the frenzy of cleaning and scrubbing that precedes it, is about much more than domestic hygiene and personal taste. It is also an attempt to exorcize the lingering presence of past residents from our new private space.

  In our frantic urge to turn an old house into a new home we attempt to conceal an unavoidable fact – that until recently it was the home of other people, and before them yet more people; a line of strangers stretching back decades and often centuries. But the truth is that no matter how many layers of paint we slap on or alterations we make, we can never succeed in wiping away the traces of the lives that have been lived there before us. If walls could talk it would be ordinary homes, not grand public buildings or the mansions of the rich, that would have all the best stories. This is because it is at home, behind closed doors and drawn curtains, that we live out our inner lives and family lives. Only there, in the domestic space, in living rooms, kitchens and bedrooms, either alone or in the company of our partners, parents and children, are we genuinely ourselves.

  There is a simple but harsh truth about houses – they live longer than we do. Their ages are counted in centuries rather than decades and some have multiple lives. Houses are malleable in ways that we are not. They can change function and status, they can be restored and brought back from the dead. Houses can adapt to changing times, they can survive economic downturns by slipping into states of almost suspended animation, living on long enough to be rediscovered and restored. Millions of British homes bear the marks and scars of such restorations and transformations: patches of new stonework or brickwork amidst the old and the ghostly outlines of doorways and windows that were long ago filled in. Our fleeting lives become single chapters in their longer stories. We might leave our marks, but they are overlain by those of later generations who will undo what we have done and make our spaces their own. For millions of people these stark realities are invigorating rather than disheartening. Rather than lament their ephemeral place in the stories of our homes they are enthralled by the possibilities these realities open up. They accept that our homes, the most intimate spaces in our lives, and the most expensive purchases we ever make, come to us second-hand, with a history of their own already written. Instead of being unsettled by these realities they are drawn to the twin prospects of becoming a small part of a bigger history and of uncovering the previous hidden chapters.

  Our homes are acutely familiar and yet their histories are concealed from us. The urge to know more, to discover something of lives lived in the same space in earlier times, is seemingly innate. Most people who are given a map of their home town from a previous century instinctively look for their own house and street. If we are lucky enough to discover a picture of our home from the past most of us find the experience both profound and unsettling. The effect is more profound if the faces of past occupants stare back out at us. To see them standing in our doorways, tending our gardens, smiling out into the street from our front windows is mesmerizing and at the same time disconcerting. In recent years thousands of people have surrendered to the urge to know more about the past lives of their homes. House histories have become the new frontier of popular, participatory history. Many of those who set out to discover the secrets contained within their own four walls are those who have already uncovered their ancestors in the archives. Enthralled by those discoveries they set out to become the curators of another history within which they are the inheritors.

  Many books about the history of the British home focus largely on one thing – architecture. The history of domestic architecture, along with the history of design and home organization, will be part of this book. How could it not be? However, the true significance of the material histories of our homes is that the lifeless things that estate agents love to call ‘original features’ enable us to commune with past residents, members of the generations for whom our homes were originally built. The features and decoration that they so valued offer us a glimpse into their lives and a better understanding of the societies they knew and the times they lived in. Innately we care about flesh and blood more than bricks and mortar, and material history only matters because it mattered to them.

  What inspires twenty-first-century homeowners to head off to the archives and wade through trade directories, deeds, land-registry documents, electoral registers, wills, birth and death certificates, parish registers, maps, census returns, local newspapers and other sources is not the thought of discovering lost plans or architectural drawings, but the hope of linking those original features or later modifications to the people who lived in our personal spaces. People to whom we are connected by shared space and separated only by the single dimension of time.

  At its most fundamental and visceral, history is about people. No new discovery, no original theory or ground-breaking revelation from the archives, really matters unless it can tell us something about the lives of human creatures, just like ourselves, who lived and died before our birth. This is the essence of what the historian G. M. Trevelyan called the ‘poetry of history . . . the quasi-miraculous fact that once, on this earth, once on this familiar spot of ground, walked other men and women, as actual as we are today, thinking their own thoughts, swayed by their own passions, but now all gone, one generation vanishing into another, gone as utterly as we ourselves shall shortly be gone, like ghosts at cockcrow.’ No ‘spot of ground’ is more familiar and important to us than our own homes, and therefore perhaps no connection with those vanished generations – other than the genealogical bonds of kinship and blood – is stronger than the connection to shared private space.

  Those who set out to discover the histories of their homes report experiencing profound feelings of empathy for the people who came before them. But their encounters in the archives with people who long ago left this world are enormously amplified upon returning home with the thought that their hands gripped the same wooden banisters and pushed open the same doors, that they sat by the same fireplaces and looked out of the same windows – although to see radically different views. Such close encounters are thrilling and ghostly and also – it would seem – addictive.

  To learn of the lives of the people who once walked through the rooms and corridors of our homes, to read their letters, to come across their signatures on yellowed documents, to hold in our hands copies of papers that shaped their fortunes; all of that is powerful enough. But to do so and then return home to the rooms from which those letters were written and in which those documents were first read is almost to commune with the dead. It is to have intimate encounters with people we could never have known and could never have met but with whom we have a powerful connection. Those connections are stronger still if we come across an old photograph that brings us face-to-face with them. What are the questions we would ask them? What did our home mean to them? Did it make them happy and what role did it play in the story of their lives? Who came and who departed in the years when our homes belonged to them? What were the key scenes played out in the rooms we now occupy?

  Amateur house historians are often deeply moved to discover that many of the people they meet on the pages of documents suffered terrible tragedies within the shared domestic space. Perhaps we should not be surprised; after all, we don’t have to go very far back into the past to arrive at an age in which births and deaths took place at home, rather than in hospitals. How many lives began in the rooms in which we now sleep? How many lives drew to an end within the walls of our homes? History, at its most visceral, is about these sorts of shiver-down-the-spine moments.

  It is not just the oldest of homes that have such stories to tell: even relatively modern houses harbour such dark secrets. We need only journey backwards seventy years to encounter an age in which Britain’s homes were more than dwelling places. During the Blitz a quarter of a million homes were destroyed. Another two million – an incredible figure – were damaged, and today thousands still bear the scars of bomb damage. Within what are today our personal spaces recent generations cowered inside Morrison shelters, steel survival spaces disguised as dining-room tables. In what are now our gardens they nightly lived a troglodyte existence, half-buried in Anderson shelters. Shrapnel marks, black scars from fires, and patches of repaired brickwork – all have stories to tell. This most tantalizing of questions, who lived in my house during the war, can be one of the easiest to answer as in 1939 the government carried out a national register of every home in England and Wales. It preceded the issuing of identity cards and ration books, but seven decades later this special, one-off census provides us with a snapshot of Britain at the start of the war. As such it carries names of most of the forty-six thousand people who were killed in the Blitz, and it lists most of the quarter of a million addresses that would not appear on the first post-war census. The comparatively easy online exercise of looking up who was living in our homes in 1939 can be the gateway drug that leads people to deeper research and a deeper sense of connection.