In think my love of old terraced houses stems from visits to my Aunt and Grandmother as a child. My grandparents moved into that house when they got married in 1916. My Father and Aunt were born in it and my Aunt lived there until she was 90. That’s over a hundred years that one modest terraced house housed the same family!
As I sit to think about it I realise that my life has been full of old terraces. As a student in London I lived in three. I can still tell a good tale about the mice that got into our Camden terrace from the piano workshop next door and the frozen shampoo in our flat on Green Lane. In Brighton I rented rooms in terraced houses and house sat for a friend who had a lovely terrace house in Lewes.
The first home I bought was an end of terrace in Brighton. Like many of the terraces in the town it was constructed of the wonderful sounding bungaroosh, basically a mixture of broken bricks and pebbles held together by a hydraulic lime mix. As far as I could tell the only thing that kept the whole thing standing was the external render and woe betide you if the render cracked and the rain got in.
Fortunately, my last two terraced homes have been rather more solid, being Edwardian brick. Both have been in the old railway town of Wolverton, on the northern edge of Milton Keynes. Wolverton has a great community spirit with lots of activities and events going on.
The first of my Wolverton houses was in Peel Road and the second in Western Road.