How did terraced housing become so desirable?

Earlham Road, in the Norwich Golden Triangle (By Stephen McKay, CC BY-SA 2.0)

A week ago I visited an area of Norwich dubbed The Golden Triangle, with Unthank Road at its centre. For the most part, the area consisted of largely undistinguished terraced housing, if considered purely in architectural terms. But there were indications everywhere that the inhabitants liked living there. Looking at visible indicators as you wandered around, this was a very successful community. One of the local parks, Heigham Park, was very lively with many different groups co-existing: people walking their dog, teenagers playing frisbee, parents with young children. There was a community noticeboard that gave details of how money had been found (I believe donated) to repair the leaking pond. The park itself was not just grass; it comprised several recognisable areas, each with a slightly different identity.

As for the streets, there were plenty of signs of life: posters in the windows for Black Lives Matter, and drawings supporting the NHS. Lots of plants in the front gardens. There were trees in the streets to provide something for the eye. There were lots of people walking about and chatting. This living community begged the question: did those terraces enable the community, or could that community have grown up anywhere? In England, there are similar areas in Cambridge, in Oxford, Bristol, and Sheffield (to my knowledge). Why do some areas of terraced housing just look run down, while others thrive? 

I remembered reading Stefan Muthesius’ The English Terraced House (1982) many years ago. Here was a book that celebrated the terraced house; would it give me an answer to the magic of communities? Would it explain the interaction between buildings and people?  I returned to Muthesius’s book with eager anticipation. Does this book capture something of the distinctiveness of the terraced house? What about the myth of the East End of London, the distinctive sense of identity and belonging that many residents claim was lost when they were rehoused in new developments such as Harlow New Town? Of course it is unfair to critique a book by an architectural historian for not describing community. But one of the intangible yet very real aspects of architecture is that the built environment and community can, perhaps, interact.

Sadly, the book doesn’t appear to consider this aspect. The book is arranged thematically: layout, energy, sanitation, improvements, plan, façade, decoration. Only the last chapter appears to look at the people who lived in these houses, but even that chapter is more about class differentiation in style, rather than communities. There is no entry for “community” in the index.

You could say that it is not the job of an architect to describe how buildings are used over a hundred years after they are built. My feeling is just the opposite. I remember architects getting very interested in the idea of “defensible space”, creating a built environment that did, or did not, create a feeling of safety and well-being to the people using it. Some benches in parks and on streets are regularly used by people walking by; others are never used. The interaction of people with their environment, although a challenging subject, is perhaps the most important of all for an architect.

Muthesius writes, in the Introduction to the book, “Most of what is said and illustrated in this book is common knowledge.” That may be, for people who live in terraced houses, but it seems to be common knowledge that can be lost when new housing development takes place. Yet Muthesius’s focus is elsewhere: “Our attention needs to be drawn to the individual features, as well as to the story of the type of house as a whole.” Does it? Does the presence or absence of a central staircase make much difference to that community in Norwich?

At the time the book was written, 1982, the terraced house was low in the pecking order for domestic property. Muthesius writes, in the Introduction: “We do not just inhabit these houses because we cannot afford newer ones, but also because we still approve of them, at least in general terms.” For areas such as the Golden Triangle in Norwich, people pay a premium  over similar properties elsewhere in Norwich: what is it that they are paying extra for? It’s not the quality of the brickwork, or the effective building design. On the contrary, many of the terraced houses are dark, have small rooms, and inadequate space for a kitchen, without major redesign.

Most desirable was a detached house with garden. Today, however, terraced houses are among the most desired and most over-priced. Take Cambridge’s Mill Road area, for example: there are streets where a poorly built terraced house will sell for substantially more than similar properties outside this desirable area. This high valuation has nothing to do with the quality of the building; it is the community and proximity to peers that is all-important. Is this considered in the Muthesius book? I don’t think so. It looks as though his book predated the dramatic change in fashion that made some terraces desirable. We will have to look elsewhere to find a book that considers both community and architecture: the approach of John Grindrod look like a good start: he describes not just the buildings, but talks to the people who designed them, as well as the people who lived in them (Concretopia, 2013, and Outskirts, 2017, for example). In the meantime, I will continue to enjoy my pleasant wandering around the parks of the Golden Triangle.