Development History - 1930s Semis by Roses

I was talking (through the fence) to my attached neighbour Alan last week whilst he was tidying up his garden ready for selling his house and he reminded me of a few things I'd forgotten he'd told me before and also told me some new things about the houses we live in.  I find the history of housing fascinating, so assuming you do too...

The first thing is, there's LOADS of these 1930s semi detached houses in the area surrounding the college - vaguely indicated in red on this Google Map. I say vaguely because I've no real idea of the west side of the college and playing field, I've not ventured that far very often on my mobility scooter. The Z icon indicates a particular house that's not been changed in it's lifetime structurally (nor redecorated since the 1980s by the look of it) in Alfred Street that shows how these houses originally looked.  My house is down by the (UK) bit of the Gainsborough College label.

1930s semis - little boxes all the same

They are as the song goes, little boxes, all the same

1930s on the right, Victorian 1870s? on the left - two streets worth

Some have been extended at the back, but only to the extent of the same footprint as the original leanto element, albeit with square off roofs. They all have exactly the same original layout, finishes and gardens - originally with a washing line post at the far end and a concrete path down the middle.

Second thing is that Alan says the College and DogWalk/ playing field north of it used to belong to Roses. Roses? the chocolates? I hear fellow Brits say - for non Brits, Cadbury's Roses are a selection of wrapped chocolates with a variety of centres, fruit, toffee, nuts etc. Once mostly seen as a treat at Christmas or for special occasions they're now available and eaten, well, like candy!

Modern Roses Chocolates

But Cadbury's have nothing to do with Gainsborough! They're based further West in England, in Birmingham.  (Also before Cadbury's bought them out, they were Mackintosh, then Rowntree Mackintosh Roses who were based in York. And the Rowntree's were a Quaker family who had very strong views on worker welfare, you still hear in the news today of the Rowntree Foundation's reports on poverty etc which has lived on long past the family's involvement in chocolate).

Well yes they are, however, Roses got their name from the manufacturer of the wrappings, and it's that company Rose Brothers (Gainsborough) Ltd who owned the whole area and had the houses built in the inter war years to be rented out. I don't know that much about it yet, but once I find out, I'll tell you more.

Roses Factory - early days - presumably tobacco packaging not sweets at that stage!

 So quick digression into sweetie wrappers - here's the link if you want to know the full glorious history of William Rose who worked in a barber shop and decided there needed to be a way to wrap tobacco mechanically and who ended up the king of packaging in the Victorian era, so much so, that the chocolates were named after the manufacturer of the packaging they were wrapped in. HERE.

Anyway, moving on, Roses got big, very big and owned a lot of land in the area, there's still their Playing Field on the other side of town and various factories have been shut down and are being sold by the current owners of Roses, to be honest I'm not quite sure what happened to the packaging factories, still new to the area and getting to grips with what used to be here and what still is.  I suspect locals still give directions by virtue of businesses that have long gone but as I've not gone anywhere and got lost and needed to ask, I'm still to verify this.

I do find the link with Rowntree interesting, the family was huge in philanthropy and, along with many other 'great and the good' in the Victorian era, laid the foundations that the State later took on as responsibilities regarding housing, health, welfare and recreation facilities etc.  There's a local history centre and I'm thinking of getting my carer to push me down there one Friday to see what we can see and also find out more about these houses.

Back to my little corner of Gainsborough though. Apparently, according to Alan, where the College is now and the Playing field you can see on the map above, there was a Roses factory and also a fair ground.  Fairs were a big thing in the UK in the past, originating as places to sell seasonal produce and hire the workers to harvest it. There's an archive HERE, one day I'll see if there's anything about Gainsborough

And the fairground was covered in cinder (not a great surprise, the whole of Gainsborough must be covered in cinders given it was a hub of industry for so long). And our houses were built on cinder. Which is why the fence building people a year or so ago were quite grumpy at giving an underquote for the fence to the previous owners, the cinder apparently is REALLY tough to dig through. My neighbour on the other side is also aware of this and when we jointly get that fence sorted out, it's something we need to bear in mind for proper concrete post footings. But I digress, again, a lot!

A fair - doubt Gainsborough's was this grand!

 So, back to these houses, Alan said Roses built them, to rent them out. He said his father (his mother died I think in mid 2017 in her 90s) rented then bought the house from Roses and originally worked for them.  Irene on the other side has told me that her house was occupied by the solicitor who dealt with the sales (no mention of renting from her stories) and his was the only house that was finished, others had missing architraves and tiling. So the complaints the occupants of new builds have these days are obviously nothing new! You'd think after nearly a hundred years, developers would have found ways to remember to finish their designs, like, ooo I don't know, a checklist? Obviously not...

So this house in Alfred Street, gives a fascinating glimpse into what they would have looked like when they were built. I'm not joking, I honestly believe the woodwork finish in these pictures is that same varnish we've been heatgunning and gel stripping from mine - a dark base with an oak coloured lighter varnish with darker decoration to look like wood grain - which from a distance looks distinctly orange with time and must have been quite hard to decorate with. I suspect most people just ignored it giggle, but it does show how long it lasted! The irony is that the wood underneath has it's own beautiful grain, but it's not the close grain of oak, the flooring guy I had here this month said he thought it's 'pirhana pine' at least that's what I thought he said, but I've not googled it yet, so feel free to pour scorn on me or enlighten me in the comments.

Here we go, an unchanged original version of these Roses houses. It's the opposite side to mine so everything is mirrored.

The frontage 

Frontage of Alfred St house

It's had new upvc windows and outer door at some stage, but still looks like it has it's original front door inset into an open porch. Painted with the oak style varnish? When we stripped my original front door, it had a few layers of green and a sort of peacock dark teal (rather lovely) but no varnish we could see, maybe I'm wrong about the varnish...

What's notable is every single house has NOTHING built into the little front garden privacy strip and quite low fencing. Why? Because it's in the Deeds that you can't build downwards for a cellar, you can't build outwards towards the road and you have to have your fence lower than a certain height (can't remember exactly). This is the same of all the other identical houses on the other side of the park/college.

Living Room

No picture of the hall or stairs, but I've been in Irene's house next door and she has the same squared off newel posts, so I'm assuming it's the same as mine.

Living Room

At this stage I have to admit I am super glad I don't have a revolting brown 1930s tiled fireplace in my living room! I've seen other pictures since I moved in of other unrenovated or partially renovated Roses' semis and some still have and some don't.  Some still have the open fires, others have gas fires, some actually have central heating.



I find it interesting that they have a picture rail. Up in the front bedroom where we stripped the wallpaper (aka it fell off in our hands) the walls are two tone, light at the top and darker below, which I assume shows where the picture rail was. I do like picture rails, if you have them strong enough there's no need to hammer holes in the wall, you just have long wires and hooks and it's easy to hang your pictures, albeit in a vertical line.  I also note no covings (the rounded piece between the top of the wall and the ceiling). There's the same very deep skirtings and yeah that original varnish!

I can imagine this is how they looked originally, not Art Deco with the opulent curves and finishes, but totally alien to the Victorian and Edwardian era of heavy features with lots of curves. Quite austere, as befits a country climbing out of the Great Depression at the end of the 1920s.


Dining Room

Dining Room

Here the skirtings (baseboards for Americans) have been painted, so has the picture rail, and the fireplace seems later, maybe 1950s? I'm regretting not keeping pictures of the other Roses' semis that have come up for sale since I moved here now, I can't remember what the others showed.



In my house, the Living and Dining rooms have been knocked through, then a wall reinstated half way across that first alcove in the Dining Room stealing space for the living room (which is to the left of this Dining Room picture) and the Dining room wall opposite the fireplace has been knocked through stealing the original kitchen.  In Irene's house (same orientation as this one) next door, the two rooms have been knocked through completely to make one long thin living/dining with french doors where the window is in this unrenovated house.


Kitchen


For me this is the most fascinating picture of the whole house

Kitchen

This room is effectively the width of the stairs and hallway and runs alongside, the same length, as the dining room (contrary to what the floorplan below shows, I think they got it wrong on the listing).

Here you can see the door near the window that goes under the stairs, mine has shelves in it as a pantry and it has a small window. Next to it is the door through to the hall. And between the two you can see what is probably an original paint finish - a brown paint to dado level, then cream above.  All the Rose's semis do have this ginormous kitchen window that is quite high, and it makes sense that it's to give space for sink and taps.



For comparison this is what this area looked like when I moved into my house and had been incorporated into the dining room to make an enormous kitchen - this is from the opposite direction showing the door to the Utility. The Pantry and Hall doors are on the left here.

My house with knocked through kitchen

And this is what it looks like now with the flooring up, you can see the concrete flooring is the original size of the kitchen like that one above - basically a galleyway from hall to utility

Original kitchen footprint in my expanded kitchen

Interestingly Irene next door has kept her kitchen in the same place, but at some stage, the Pantry under stairs door has been moved 90 degrees into the hall so she doesn't have the 'dead space' this property has in it's kitchen.


There's no pictures of the Utility sadly, but it seems to hold the cooker. So it looks like the previous owners essentially had sink and storage in the kitchen, and cooking in the utility which feels weird to me.  There was also obviously NO chimney in the kitchen, it was built to a modern (at the time) standard that had no open fire/range in the room, it was small, functional, and cold, a large window but with very little direct sunlight (perfect conditions given there was no refridgeration).


Main Bedroom
This is at the back of the house adjoining the bathroom. Again with the revolting 1930s mottled brown tiles with a noticeably smaller fireplace. 

Main bedroom at back

Second Bedroom
This one faces the street.  Again with the brown varnish and picture rail. Also as was common in the 1930s, the bedrooms had lino on the floor, with a loose carpet square on top. It was easier to keep clean and warmer than bare floorboards.  This time the revolting 1930s fireplace is mottled green.  I also imagine the chimneys are open, given there's a board with a handle blocking them. This begs the question, did they have heat upstairs at all in the last 50 years in this house? There's no sign of hearths, nor gasfires! Maybe they were the super old sort I last saw when renting run down student housing, decades older than the rather more modern 1970s one in the Living Room in this house.

Second bedroom at front

Bathroom
I also find the bathroom really interesting, the bathroom itself has the bath and the sink, but the WC is separate and there's a wooden cupboard in the bathroom

Bathroom at back upstairs

Again quite austere. I do wonder if the tiling is original? It certainly seems very mid-century to me. During the 1990s my parents lived in a 1930s house occupied by the original builder, they had floor to ceiling blue glass tiles (probably venetian) that were original to the house and had the most glorious depth to them as they were clear with the blue suspended in them.  An earlier house my parents had in the 1970s/1980s (Edwardian 1900s) had the same bath with similar taps and a black side to it and a separate WC.  It's all coming back!!!   But those two houses of my parents' were on a different scale, they also had 'housemaid's cupboards' - one with a sink and one without (possibly removed over time) - these Roses' semis are built for families with no servants at all, except maybe a 'daily'.


I also like the integral towel rails on the sink! This, like pockets in dresses, is something that should happen more often!

In Edwardian houses that I've seen, the bedrooms each had a sink in the corner, for morning ablutions and a separate loo to the bathroom (with sink in bathroom not with the loo, not necessarily next door to each other). I do wonder if the bedrooms originally had sinks in them, or if that was a 'step up' and something for the middle class rather than working/lower middle class these houses were aimed at. I must remember to ask Irene and Alan!

I have a friend who has a 1930s semi up near Manchester which has one bedroom with a sink, but I think that room was a later extension, I don't know if it originally had them in all the bedrooms and her house whilst built to a similar layout is significantly larger and more gracious in terms of space (wider hall for a start!)

Third Bedroom

Third Bedroom

 Again with the lino in the bedroom, I do wonder how old it is, it doesn't look super knackered but it also doesn't look like vinyl.  Again the skirting and picture rails have been painted.

Interestingly the window seems more offset in this room than in my house, perhaps to allow better for a headboard for a single bed?

Outside
This isn't the original garden layout, originally they all had concrete paths up the middle (or so Irene and Alan tell me) The previous owners of my house had it taken out about a decade ago for mine.

Back of the house

As you can see, the leanto is the same shape as mine, but they've not got french windows and a posh patio, their's is still the basic utility with WC and coal shed, though there's a window in the coal shed so that has been incorporated. According to the listing there's a downstairs loo, which I think all the Roses' semis had - which I find fascinating as a generation earlier, there was only one loo, and that was probably outside, by this stage, the 1930s, there wasn't just one inside loo, but two, one on each floor. It's the primary reason I bought my house, because much of the housing stock is earlier and has only an upstairs or downstairs bathroom or later and has only an upstairs bathroom. It's my perception that only in recent decades that a downstairs loo in addition to an upstairs bathroom has been consistently provided by developers in 'family' houses, and isn't that common in smaller ones. So in actual fact these Roses' semis were quite 'luxurious' for their time in terms of facilities.

View over the Playing Fields to the OTHER row of Roses' semis
You can see the houses on the other side of the playing fields are yep, little boxes, all the same and yep, they're the same as these ones

More of the same on the other side of the Playing Fields

I have to say it's a nice open view, but given I can hear the Sunday football teams at my house some distance away, I doubt it's terribly peaceful!

Floorplan
There is a floorplan for the house, but I think they've got the kitchen wrong, I think the hall is shorter and the kitchen ends on the same level as the dining room, simply because the leanto just isn't big enough for both the kitchen and utility areas - I think the kitchen is split in two incorporating the old kitchen and also the back door area with a door between and it's confused them.

 More like this:

And yes, I know, it would be far better if I could actually GO see it myself, but I'm tired and have other things that are more important. When Alan's house goes on the market, I'll post the pictures here as that's adjoining my house so will be exact replica in reverse, but hasn't been changed at all structurally.


Anyway that's it, here's the listing of the unrenovated house HERE

And here's the listing for a house closer to me the same orientation as the unrenovated one, but whose kitchen has been kept and extended into the leanto so it's super long HERE