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50
ACCOMMODATION EXISTING IN THE BOROUGH.
The number of private dwellings, self-contained maisonettes, mansion-flats, residential hotels
and boarding-houses in the borough is approximately 22,000, and they are situated chiefly in
South Kensington and the Pembridge Ward of North Kensington. They are occupied by the
higher social and professional and semi-professional classes and present little difficulty to the officers
of the Public Health Department.
There are about 900 houses of the cottage type, that is, with three or less bedrooms. These
cottages are distributed fairly evenly over all parts of the borough and generally provide satisfactory
accommodation for single families.
The number of tenements in block buildings in various parts of the borough occupied by the
working classes is approximately 1,000. As these are generally of fairly recent construction, they
are mostly satisfactory from the sanitary point of view.

In recent years the general condition of mews-dwellings in the borough has been very much
improved and the Council have paid a good deal of attention to the cleanliness of the mewsways.
In certain of the mewsways occupied by the poorest classes, the stable accommodation is used for
storage purposes by costermongers, and difficulties arise owing to the careless manner in which
these street traders dispose of their unsound food-stuffs. The activities of the Council, however,
in regard to this problem have done much to secure better conditions in North Kensington mewsways.
There are in the borough approximately 5,700 houses let in lodgings, and occupied by the
working classes without having been specially adapted for the purpose. These houses are satisfactory
from a point of view of structural and architectural planning, and except for the fact that
they have in the majority of cases no bathroom, they would be regarded as providing satisfactory
accommodation as single-family houses. They are large, with a basement, ground floor,
first floor, second floor, and sometimes a third floor and fourth floor. There are two rooms on
each floor and generally a slip room on one or two floors. With the exception of the slip rooms,
the rooms are of good dimensions. Difficulties arise, however, owing to these houses, which were
originally intended for one family, having been let to three, four, five or six families.

There are in the borough about 13,000 basements used for dwelling purposes. The number of
these dwellings with ceilings at or below the street level is approximately 648, the number in which
the width of the front area does not exceed three feet is 1,233, and the number in which the width
of the front area exceeds three feet and does not exceed four feet is 2,087.