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 Dartford Property Report 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 Dartford, not Bath, so the majority of our Dartford
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 Dartford 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 Dartford – 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 Dartford, some very
interesting numbers appear. Of the 22,379
properties in DA1 …
1,350 are Detached properties (6.0%)
7,126 are Semi Detached properties (31.8%)
8,484 are Terraced / Town House properties (37.9%)
5,414 are Apartment/ Flat’s (24.1%)
And quite noteworthy, there are 5 mobile homes, representing 0.02% of
all property in Dartford.
When it comes to values, the average price paid for a Dartford terraced
house in 1995 was £52,620 and the latest set of figures released by the land
Registry states that today that figure stands at £264,830, a rise of 403% - that’s
not bad at all is it.
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!
Don’t dismiss the humble terraced house – especially in Dartford!
