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134
This area contains a terrace of more modern property (estimated to be about
36 years old) situate in Hockley Street. These houses, however, are cramped on
site, badly arranged and planned, with very little yard space; and it appears that
each of these houses was originally intended to be occupied as two tenements or
separate flats, but no proper separate provision for domestic convenience appears
to have been provided except separate water supplies on the ground and first
floors. The ground floor back room in all these houses is very deficient in natural
light and ventilation, owing to the bad arrangement of a lean-to glazed roof built
against the rear wall to afford protection to the wash-copper and sink, which
would otherwise be in the open yard.
The principal defects and bad features of the area, as a whole, are the narrow
and badly arranged streets; the aged, decayed and worn-out condition of most of
the houses; differences in the levels of the floors, streets and back yards, making
sub-floor ventilation difficult, if not inadequate in many cases; the fact that most
of this area was originally built up on low-lying marshy ground, without any
proper provision for the prevention of rising dampness or ground air in the houses,
and the bad internal planning of the houses—all these factors result in a general
deficiency of natural light and air circulation and combine in producing damp
and unhealthy living conditions.
A peculiar feature of this area is the large amount of irregular employment
and poorly-paid class of worker occupying the houses; also the fact that many of
the adults are chronic invalids.
Photographs Nos. 2 and 3 indicate types of dwellings found in this area.
NORTHWOLD ROAD AREA.
This area consists largely of cottage working-class dwellings, but there has
been a considerable diversity of building construction disposed in a somewhat
erratic manner, comprising mainly detached and semi-detached cottages in addition
to the usual terraced dwellings. Some of the housing property has been purchased
for demolition and the erection on the cleared sites of factories and workshops.
The streets vary in width from 12 feet to 50 feet, and there are 5 culs-de-sac, either
open courts or narrow passageways—the widths of which vary between 3 feet 9 inches
to 22 feet—providing access to groups of cottages.
Despite the open aspect of the site as viewed generally, there are groups of
small houses so closely built together as to be congested and deprived of a sufficiency
of natural light, ventilation and even sufficient space to provide proper sanitary
conveniences.
Whatever the type of dwelling on this area, the condition of the dwellings
is very much the same. Probably the age of most of the properties is approximately
150 years, and there is no question but that all the dwellings present definite and
unmistakable signs of structural deterioration due to the effects of age and wear
over a very long period of years, and quite apart from this consideration, there
are many other permanent sanitary defects. Most of the dwellings possess bad
planning features of some kind or another, in most cases entry being direct from
the street into the living room and with dark, winding staircases opening out
of such rooms, or from small cramped lobbies rising through the middle of the house
between the front and back rooms where it is not possible to obtain by normal
means, any sort of natural lighting or ventilation. There are houses where the
floor is below street level and where one steps down into the house directly off
the public footpath; there are a number of dwellings of the single-back type
where no windows are provided at the rear above the ground floor, and these
dwellings obtain only very poor ventilation on the ground floor level, and many
have small, cramped and low rooms averaging between 6 feet and 7 feet in height.