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Attics in terraced houses


rob123

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I am originally from Manchester but have lived in a few terraced properties in Sheffield over the years. What intrigues me is that even modest terraces have original attic rooms. This is not usual for similar properties in Manchester unless they are recent conversions. I was wondering for what reason they were built with attics, was it an assumption that the residents would be carrying out some trade from the house ?

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I was brought up on  Hinde House Lane in  a  very long row of terraced houses. During an area improvement in the 1980's it was discovered that you could walk through the lofts from top to bottom of the road as the lofts had no partitions between lofts!  Most houses had a wall  put in  between lofts to stop burglars having a  field day!!!!!!!!!!!

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Many families were large enough to need several bedrooms. If the family didn't need all the rooms they could be let out to get extra income. In the slightly larger terraced houses built in the latter part of the 19th century, servants would live in attic rooms. Even middle class families had servants and even working class folk might have a live-in nurse for the first few months after childbirth, particularly if it had been a difficult birth.  A trawl through maybe the 1891 census should come up with many examples of a lot of people living in one house. I came across one in Attercliffe that wasn't much more than a terraced house, with about 10 people living in it. Mum, Dad, four kids, grandma, and three lodgers. They might have been extended family of course.

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1 hour ago, johnm said:

I was brought up on  Hinde House Lane in  a  very long row of terraced houses. During an area improvement in the 1980's it was discovered that you could walk through the lofts from top to bottom of the road as the lofts had no partitions between lofts!  Most houses had a wall  put in  between lofts to stop burglars having a  field day!!!!!!!!!!!

Yes John, I remember being told this about streets of terraced houses in Lancashire (Burnley, I think) some years ago. I'm not sure about the burglars though - does the average burglar, having entered a house, head past the valuables and up to the attic which most likely contains only cast-off junk?

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The walls between lofts were there to stop fire running through the roofspace of terraces.

Most houses built in Sheffield and surrounding areas until the 1920s had attics. Many had cellar kitchens too.

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I can verify that, Oldbloke. Our house had a large concrete slab table in the cellar built on brick pillars. It was about four inches thick and stood in the middle of the room with space for people to stand all around it. The attic was my bedroom. The ceiling sloped down at one side and the wall on that side was only about three foot high. In the wall was a small square hatch just big enough to get through which led into the loft space. I climbed in there once with a little torch and found all the old gas light fittings which had been taken down and stored away. It got pretty cold in winter, I remember reading in bed and seeing my own breath.

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Ours had the black range in the back cellar, a coal cellar and a food cellar with a thick marble slab to keep food cold. In the 1920s (guess) a Yorkshire range was installed in what is now the dining room. That was removed in the 50s when a gas cooker was installed in the kitchen (which previously just had a sink.

I too slept in the attic and well remember seeing my own breath and ice on the inside of the window in the winter. In the summer chocolate would melt. It doesn't get quite so extreme these days.

The stairs get steeper every year though.

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Being from Manchester, Rob123, you will also have noticed that long rows of terraced houses on a hill there have a continuous, sloping roof line and a single, long gutter with occasional down pipes running full length of the row as they did not step each house on a slope, as in Yorkshire. These can be up to 50 or more houses long.

Opposite to Attics, or Garrets as we called them, our long-gone terrace house in Pitsmoor had two bricked-up doorways in the cellar, once used for escape routes if bombed in the war, one either side to each adjoining house , the bricked-up doorways being clearly visible against the white-washed cellar walls ( white-washed walls in a coal cellar !). I presume these escape routes were dictated by the local authority. When the bags of coal were being tipped down, someone would stand at the top of the cellar steps to count them down, just in case !

In addition to the cellar proper being used to store foodstuffs, many items were kept on the 'cellar-head' at  the top of the cellar steps. Most people in the area had a clothes mangle down in the cellar; what those women went through !

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