Back-to-back houses

Back-to-back houses

in which two houses share a rear wall (or in which the rear wall of a house directly abuts a factory or other building).

Usually of low quality (sometimes with only two rooms, one on each floor) and high density, they were built for working class people and because three of the four walls of the house were shared with other buildings and therefore contained no doors or windows, back-to-back houses were notoriously ill-lit and poorly ventilated and sanitation was of a poor standard.

History

These had become common in Victorian English inner city areas, such as Leeds, Bradford and Birmingham. In Leeds, this style of terrace continued to be built right up until the 1930s.

The advent of council housing after the First World War resulted in councils organising programmes of slum clearances which were all part of post-war redevelopment programmes. These procedures saw mass demolition of back-to-back houses begin in the 1920s, and by the 1970s the vast majority of back-to-back houses in Britain had been cleared.

Blind-backs

Back-to-back properties can also be known as blind-backs particularly when built up against factory walls, or occasionally as a terrace of houses standing on its own (from the end elevation this looks like a terrace that had been sliced in half and then one half demolished).

Other Forms of Back-to-backs

Other forms of back-to-back housing include Tyneside flats, tenements, courts, tunnel-backs and cluster houses

Usage

In recent years the term "back-to-back" has become a general catch-all term applied (erroneously) by the media, to "through" terraced houses too (whose backs only face each other, being separated by an alleyway, and thus not contiguous like a true "back-to-back").

ee also

*Birmingham Back to Backs

External links

* [http://www.leeds.gov.uk/discover/images/2004114_64214051.jpgLeeds aerial view]
* [http://www.bbc.co.uk/insideout/westmidlands/series1/back-to-back-houses.shtml Preserved Birmingham back-to-back houses]
* [http://www.bradfordhistorical.org.uk/antiquary/third/vol02/houses.html Article on Bradford back-to-back houses]
* [www.ehs.org.uk/ehs/conference2006/Assets/SimonsNRIID.doc Back-to-back housing in Reading]


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