Harringay, Haringey - So Good they Spelt it Twice!
Cellars
I've been looking at a few properties on the ladder recently and a lot have cellars which have a strip (about the same width as the hallway) which is full height and then the rest which appears to be mainly foundations with a couple of feet gap below the floorboards above.
I was wondering why they're designed this way. I assume that it was most likely a coal cellar although none that I've looked at seem to have chutes.
Also, I'm sure I've read a few posts on here about people having them dug out for storage but I can't find them. Has anyone had this done? How long did it take/how much did it cost? Thanks
Replies to This Discussion
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Permalink Reply by Michael Anderson on
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Our still has the coal chute. It’s about 5ft high and only really of any use for things not affected by damp as it is below the dpc. I would imagine an excavation would be a costly affair
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Permalink Reply by Lizzie R on
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the ladder was built on a hilly area, so some houses have the benefits of cellars, utilised by the Victorians as coal bunkers and some don't. for instance, the top west side of Allison rd, no cellars, the houses opposite do, as the land falls away out the back. Welcome to the neighbourhood! Its a brilliant place to live. check out the History section in main menu. It's fascinating.
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Permalink Reply by Mavic Starfish on
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Hi Andrew - my experience in this post https://www.harringayonline.com/forum/topics/builder-for-basement
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Permalink Reply by Bethany Burrow Atherton on
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Ours doesn't have the chute, but it does have the coal hole in the front step. It is a full cellar (not just a strip) and the previous owner had done some half-hearted digging out, so I'm not sure what's original and what's not - they could have removed some kind of divider between the coal bit and the non-coal bit.
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Yes ours has the strip. I used to live in Crouch End, which had the same set up.
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Permalink Reply by Hugh on
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Ours has a 'full-height' strip which led to a coal chute in the front pathway. The main area under the the living rooms is at waist height when standing in the 'full-height' area. It's wonderful for storing stuff, but you have to be careful with filling it up too much!.
These half-basements became the norm in Victorian homes. In most Georgian and in some Victorian homes, the basement was set up for use as a kitchen, usually with the expectation that it would be used by a servant.
There were of course variations in Victorian houses. For example the cellar of Stoke House on Hewitt Road, included a separate cold store/ pantry.
Most suburban houses built in the later Victorian period were designed and built by small builders using pattern books. I assume that a full-cellar pattern was an option. However, the half-basement was the most popular. I imagine this was because it provided the cheapest / quickest way of supplying the bare minimum that the future occupants of the house would require. Digging out the whole area of the cellar was much more expensive in terms of labouring costs, it would have added days to the build and would have required the additional expense involved in disposing of the earth removed - it would have been quite a few carts-full.
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Thanks for all the responses. Interesting that they used to be used as kitchens. Sounds like digging the rest out could be fairly pricey.
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I don’t think many, if any, of the Ladder basements were used as kitchens. By the late 19th century, that was not common in the type of housing built here.
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Permalink Reply by Karen Alexander on
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Our house on Wightman Road has a basement which covers the footprint on the ground floor so is pretty substantial. It is about 6 foot in height so we can stand up in it without banging our heads!
When we bought the house the couple before us had been there since 1952 and were using the basement as a kitchen, complete with 1930's cupboards. There was also a separate part for coal and it was sectioned off for various storage.
We opened it up and have used it as an office and we have our washing machine etc down there. It is a little damp but not enough to not have electrical equipment down there. Its used for storage and boy have we got a lot of junk down there - if we ever moved it would take a week to clear it!
We have never had a proper quote to make it fully habitable but it would need digging down a couple of feet to meet building regs and would need full tanking. A couple of builder friends and structural engineer didn't think we would get much change out of £100k.
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