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VICTORIAN HOUSING
In many towns and cities in Northern Ireland there are Victorian
houses and many of us still live in them. The Victorian houses that
are still here were those that were well built, after all, they
are over 100 years old. Victorians loved to do two things when designing
buildings. They loved to copy designs from other countries and they
loved to show off, for example by decorating buildings with carvings,
patterns of coloured bricks and stained glass in windows.
Unfortunately, most Victorian people didn’t live in well
built houses. They lived in the slums, areas of badly built houses
paid for by the mill owners. To make as much money as they could,
the mill owners spent as little money as possible on building houses
for their workers. Families were forced to live in tiny, dirty,
damp houses, often with everyone packed into the one room.
Slum houses were made from very cheap bricks that soaked up water
like sponges when it rained. There was no running water or indoor
toilet. The whole street used the same toilet at the end of the
street, which was a simple hole in the ground with seats over it.
Once a month a man known as a Midnight Angel came with his shovel,
horse and cart to clear away the waste, which was sometimes called
night soil. This must have been the worst job in the world!
If the weather was especially wet the toilet would flood the streets
and houses. The cheap bricks soaked up the water and sewage and
must have stank. It is hard for us to imagine what it was like for
the people who had to live in suck terrible conditions. Sickness
was common, with diseases like cholera, dysentery, tuberculosis
and polio common killers.
Luckily, not everyone had to live in such unhealthy conditions.
Read on to learn about three Victorian families whose houses still
exist in South Belfast.
The Coopers
Mr. and Mrs. Cooper lived in a small terraced house in Great Northern
Street. It is a two storey terraced house with a small garden, small
bay window and some coloured brick patterns. It has two chimney
pots which means it had two fires for heating and cooking. This
tells us that there are at least two rooms in the Cooper’s
house. Mr. Cooper worked on the railway and Mrs. Cooper worked in
a linen mill. They had nine children, but four of them died from
disease as babies. Their oldest boy was crippled and had to use
crutches after catching polio.
Albert
Albert was more wealthy than the Coopers and lived in a large two
storey terraced house with an attic on Lisburn Avenue. It has a
large bay window, is decorated with patterns made from yellow brick,
has a small garden with a wrought iron gate and is decorated with
stucco on the ground floor. Stucco is cement stuck onto the bricks
like icing on a cake and is shaped into decorative patterns. On
Albert’s house the stucco round the door is shaped like an
arch with pillars. He had a haberdashery shop on the Lisburn Road.
It sold buttons, pins, needles, thread and other things for making
clothes. Albert was married to his second wife after his first wife
died from disease. He had two children and a servant. The servant
lived in the small attic room and cleaned, cooked and lit the fires
for Albert and his family.
Mrs. Warden
Mrs. Warden and her family lived in a large detached house on Adelaide
Park. It was specially designed for them and is called the Shakespear
House. Mr. Warden owned the Opera House and had his home named after
the famous writer.
The gable or end walls are copied from houses in Holland and the
stained glass in the two conservatories was designed by Mrs. Warden.
It has many other features including a small decorative wrought
iron balcony, stucco, bay windows and many fancy chimney pots.
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