Living In Houses – Ruth Dalton

Before doing so, as a first-time house buyer, I decided to check out the prices of similar properties. Unsurprisingly, I stumbled upon another flat, for the same price, but approximately one mile further east, on the border between the London boroughs of Hackney and Bethnal Green. This other flat was about twice the size of my small Haberdasher Street flat (two bedrooms instead of one, two bathrooms instead of one, and practically double the useable floor area).

This flat was in London Wharf. London Wharf was then a newly converted, loft-style, four-storey factory/warehouse on the Regent’s Canal (Venice-style, the warehouse walls plunged straight down into the water, forming part of the edge of the canal). It was the early winter of 1991 when I serendipitously found the flat, and I soon discovered that the developers were unusually desperate to sell, and to sell quickly. It transpired that flat number A1 was the last-remaining of the 36 newly converted flats to be sold, and house prices, especially in London, had been steadily plummeting since the house price crash of early 1989.

Furthermore, the year 1991 also holds the dubious fame of being the year of peak house repossessions in the UK: 75,000 homes were repossessed that year.1 Looking back now at graphs of house price trends, I see that when I bought London Wharf it had already been three years since the crash, and those were three years of unrelentingly falling houses prices; they continued to fall for another five quarters after I moved in, not bottoming out until the second quarter of 1993.

It is easy, therefore, to see why the developers were so keen to be rid of their last flat. There were many aspects of the flat that appealed to me, but the three main ones were its industrial aesthetic, its exceptionally tall, floor-to-ceiling height and its proximity to the water. I will quickly describe each of these, and what was their appeal, in turn.

First, considering its industrial aesthetic, it had previously been a factory and warehouse, and its utilitarian brick walls and large windows represented a trend of living in former industrial buildings that very much epitomised the zeitgeist of the time (more on this in the next section). But like many others, I was seduced by the former industrial, slightly edgy and unconventional style of it. I very much liked the idea of living somewhere with a bit more history and character, and frankly, just a little less ‘ordinary’. Second, its floor-to-ceiling height was almost 4 metres (3.9 metres or 13 feet), and I have already described in the previous chapter (Chapter 4 on Orchard Place, a house with similarly high ceilings) how uplifting I find high ceilings to be.

ISBN (eBook PDF): 978-1-84822-605-0 ISBN (eBook Mobi): 978-1-84822-607-4 ISBN (eBook ePub): 978-1-84822-606-7 A Cataloguing-in-Publication record for this book is available from the British Library. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, electrical, mechanical or otherwise, without first seeking the permission of the copyright owners and publishers. Every effort has been made to seek permission to reproduce the images in this book.

Any omissions are entirely unintentional, and details should be addressed to the publishers. Ruth Dalton has asserted her right under the Copyright, Designs and Patent Act, 1988, to be identified as the Author of this Work. Cover illustrations from top to bottom: extended elevations showing 93–97 Gower Street; Wharf Place (canal side); Haberdasher Street terraces; Gloucester Grove block and lift/stair tower; part of an Elm Village terrace.

All elevations © Ruth Dalton.

This is a short excerpt from the opening of “” by Unknown, quoted for review and introduction purposes. All rights belong to the copyright holders.

Book Information

• Unique ID: becd78c4055613ee
• File Extension: .pdf
• File Size: 16,348,587 bytes (15.591 MB)
• Title: –
• Author: Unknown
• ISBN: 9781848224957, 9781848226050, 9781848226074, 9781848226067
• Pages: 251
• Language: English (en)

Reading & Word Statistics

• Estimated Reading Time: 318.56 minutes
• Total Words: 63,713
• Total Characters: 393,319
• Average Words per Page: 253.84
• Average Characters per Page: 1567.01

Most Frequent Words

house (344), london (240), one (232), building (216), houses (209), housing (206), street (189), estate (146), first (144), village (137), built (128), architects (123), time (122), two (122), room (118), history (117), flats (112), also (112), place (107), elm (106), new (96), buildings (95), vol (93), architect (91), see (91), cottage (88), design (85), part (82), gloucester (82), architecture (80), between (80), grove (79), architectural (79), living (78), dwellings (76), wharf (74), brick (74), haberdasher (73), flat (73), used (72), georgian (69), front (68), construction (66), yearnor (65), www (65), model (65), years (65), number (65), retrieved (65), original (64), road (63), however (63), use (62), many (61), well (61), three (61), priestpopple (60), small (59), still (59), rooms (59), since (58), journal (58), now (57), gower (56), north (56), back (56), walls (56), stone (55), large (55), society (54), rather (54), com (52), chapter (52), former (52), far (52), book (51), made (51), another (51), lived (51), century (51), space (51), plan (51), stock (50), even (50), became (50), therefore (50), windows (50), known (49), home (49), camden (49), hexham (48), floor (48), later (48), british (47), terrace (46), villa (46), like (46), possible (46), canal (45), side (45).

PDF Download