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 Royal Tunbridge Wells 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 Royal Tunbridge Wells, not Bath, so the majority of
our Royal Tunbridge Wells 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 Royal Tunbridge Wells 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 Royal
Tunbridge Wells – 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 Royal Tunbridge Wells,
some very interesting numbers appear. Of
the 26,061 properties in Royal Tunbridge Wells …
5,086 are Detached properties (19.5%)
6,509 are Semi Detached properties (24.9%)
4,742 are Terraced / Town House properties (18.2%)
9,720 are Apartment/ Flat’s (37.3%)
And quite noteworthy, there are 4 mobile homes, representing 0.02% of
all property in Royal Tunbridge Wells.
When it comes to values, the average price paid for a Royal Tunbridge
Wells terraced house in 1995 was £56,700 and the latest set of figures released
by the land Registry states that today that figure stands at £327,590, a rise
of 478% - not bad when you consider semi-detached properties in Royal Tunbridge
Wells in the same time frame have only risen by 364%.
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!
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