
Why So Many Londoners Live in 'Two-Up, Two-Down' Housing - pseudolus
https://www.citylab.com/design/2020/01/london-architecture-history-home-design-building-floor-plan/603184/
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rwmj
Only mentions one very practical aspect of the layout in passing: The original
heating system is three coal fires, plus a coal-fired stove in the
kitchen/dining room at the back. In a two-up two-down arrangement these can be
fed into a single chimney stack (also shared with the neighbouring house which
has the mirror floor plan). If there was another set of rooms on the other
side then those rooms would be permanently cold, or else you'd need a second
chimney.

Each pair of houses is really built around the massive chimney. You can see it
as shaded boxes on the left in the diagram in the center of the page, although
these boxes underestimate the real size of the chimney-breasts:

[https://cdn.theatlantic.com/assets/media/img/posts/2019/12/B...](https://cdn.theatlantic.com/assets/media/img/posts/2019/12/British-1/76fb9bacf.jpg)

Our house has this arrangement except a former owner removed the chimney stack
at the back to get more space in the back rooms. When we moved in the chimney
stack, weighing perhaps 10 tons, was resting on a piece of wood on the wooden
ceiling joists - it's one of the things we have since fixed at great expense.

When you're in London and you see a building with chimneys you can tell two
things: (1) It was built before 1960. (2) Count the chimney pots and it will
tell you how many internal rooms there are, since each room will have its own
fireplace, flue and chimney pot. eg:
[https://stockarch.com/images/buildings/urban/rooftops-
chimne...](https://stockarch.com/images/buildings/urban/rooftops-chimney-
pots-6792)

~~~
fyfy18
Why built before 1960? Were there regulations restricting the build of new
coal heated houses in London after this?

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NCG_Mike
Smog pollution was a big issue back then. You'll have seen the old movies
where London is "foggy".

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adrianmonk
Hah, those quotation marks definitely changed the way I see the brand identity
of an American raincoat manufacturer.

The manufacturer is London Fog, and their brand is supposed to conjure an
image of sophistication by association with a romantic ideal of London. But
the reference they are making is actually, at least somewhat, a reference to a
euphemism for pollution.

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NeedMoreTea
The truth is in the article, but surprisingly well hidden. Most of it is
misunderstanding mid Victorian housing, or at the very least the term, and
talks about derivatives not 2+2s. The key point of a 2+2 is the rooms are the
full width of the house.

The floorplan shown is _not_ a typical UK Victorian two up, two down. It's a
three up, three down, sometimes called by estate agents an _extended_ two up,
two down. Count the rooms, it's not difficult. It's clearly heavily influenced
by the 2+2. :)

The only point he gets it right is in the caption under the photo further on
down the article:

 _Note that the houses in the foreground are built along more generous lines
than those at the back, with bow windows on both floors and an extra room
built above the projecting ground-floor kitchen_

Yes, three up, three down, or as the the aerial photo two up, two down, with
attached kitchen/bathroom. More like the shown floorplan to allow an extra
_third_ room on each floor, one of which being the then new innovation of
indoor bathroom/toilet.

A two up, two down has a feature that the rooms are the _full width of the
house:_ reception, with kitchen in back -- one of those two has the stairs
within it, the second floor has two bedrooms and a "landing" that's often just
the width of the stair treads and two doors at the top. The toilet is outside
by the coal house, and the bath was tin, hung up in the kitchen when not used,
often under the stairs. They have often gained a 20th century replan or rear
extension to permit the indoor bathroom/toilet, and frequently larger or
separate kitchen underneath -- though many have kitchen and bathroom in a
single ground floor extension.

Nowt else is a two up, two down, they're relatives, derivatives. Many mid
Victorian 2+2 terraces came with colossal garden plots - 150-300 foot long,
giving loads of scope for later indoor bathrooms, kitchens, and garages --
sometimes double length at the far end.

~~~
rob74
Well, that depends on whether you consider the kitchen (which in that floor
plan is an annex of the dining room) and bathroom (which, as the article
mentions, was added later in older houses) as "rooms". In Germany, these are
usually not counted as rooms, hence acronyms such as "2ZKB" (2 Zimmer, Küche,
Bad -> 2 rooms, kitchen, bathroom) for apartments.

~~~
NeedMoreTea
Well when the term was coined, the key was two full width rooms each floor.
Get out into the industrial and poorer areas especially in the North, Scotland
and Wales and there were some one up, one down back to back terraces. Most of
those went in slum clearances, but some survive...

Sure, the indoor bathroom/toilet was added later as it was a Victorian era
innovation, but the second room on the ground floor was generally a back
kitchen/diner. So you'll find a great many with a later kitchen extension
(frequently flat roofed, and incredibly poorly, or not insulated) that permit
separating kitchen and dining room, often adding an upstairs indoor
bathroom/toilet for the first time. When those extra rooms were there from new
build they weren't called 2+2s -- though they were clearly two bed houses
derived from them.

UK estate agent standard for describing housing is number of bedrooms.
Apparently we're meant to figure everything else from "two bed", "five bed".
What else is in there is often quite varied and ludicrously (fraudulently)
creative in estate agent blurb. Thank heavens for the relatively recent
expectation of a floorplan and regulation limiting estate agent creativity.
Until the 1980s or 1990s you almost never got a floorplan unless buying new,
or exceptionally upmarket. :)

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jakozaur
I would personally like to see higher buildings with parks around them rather
than having houses packed.

More space, higher density. Win, win.

~~~
rwmj
This was tried in the 1960s and turned out to be a disaster. People didn't
want to live in those houses.

~~~
arethuza
The New (quite old) Town of Edinburgh is mostly 4 or 5 story buildings of
flats (a lot originally very grand town houses) with shared private gardens
for each small area. It's a great place to live (we lived there for ~25 years,
with kids growing up there) and is pretty desirable.

NB I don't know it would be economically feasible to replicate the New Town -
but it does demonstrate to me that if you get the layout and quality right
then people will happily live in an environment like that.

~~~
rwmj
4 or 5 stories is very different from 20+ story tower blocks. Also those flats
have private gardens at the back.

~~~
arethuza
The private gardens at the back are, in every case I knew of in the New Town
(although not elsewhere in Edinburgh), owned by the lowest flat in the
building. The trade off being that get a garden but the flats themselves tend
to be darker and dingier than higher flats.

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barrkel
Also a common feature is the galley kitchen, an unpleasantly small working
space that often doesn't accommodate more than one person at a time.

It's quite different to what I'm used to from Ireland, where the kitchen is
the second social space of the home after the sitting room, and often contains
the dining table.

~~~
downtide
You say that, we stayed in a farmhouse in Ireland. Two rooms - one bedroom and
the kitchen/sitting room, around a huge hearth. With the cowshed directly
attached. Ours was vaguely modernised, hearth ripped out, small bathroom add-
on. Without the warm hearth, the building started to suffer. If only these old
stone cottages were insulated beneath and outside.

Small windows were a result of the window tax.

~~~
barrkel
Well, peasant cottages from the 19th century, for sure; I lived in one at one
point too, and there the cooking would have been done on the hearth, the focus
of the living space.

That cottage was cool in summer and cold in winter and damp all year around,
walls made from stone and mortar over 1 metre thick, originally with a thatch
roof but since replaced with tile after a fire. The economy that built those
cottages was basically subsistence living, hardly a structure built with
surplus to make different choices.

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moomin
An under-appreciated aspect is how land law interacts with building
preferences. In the UK if you own a house, broadly speaking you have complete
control over its configuration and its costs.

Leasehold, which is the dominant model for apartments, gives that control to
the owner of the whole building. This is basically a recipe for nasty
surprises.

The average English person isn’t a law expert. But they know someone with a
flat, and that they’re constantly complaining about their landlord.

~~~
M2Ys4U
Leasehold has been creeping in to regular terraced housing, too, along with
its associated ground rent scandal.

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pintxo
Next in the series: [https://www.citylab.com/design/2020/01/berlin-
architecture-h...](https://www.citylab.com/design/2020/01/berlin-architecture-
history-home-design-rental-mietskasernen/604795/)

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sgt101
Mandating a large proportion of units constructed to be high density 3 bedroom
would change the London housing market. Currently young couples get a 2 bed
(with one bed being a box room) and have to move out once the second baby
comes (the pressure when a first baby gets to three is high as well). Three
beds would make for long term family viability and would knock the pressure
out of the housing market.

~~~
mytailorisrich
A big issue in London and the UK is that everyone wants a house and garden,
and flats are usually poorly designed and poor quality.

One reason many couples move out of London when they have children is that it
is impossible for most to afford such a house in London.

This also makes housing quite low density, which leads to longer commute and
more expensive public transport.

~~~
Findeton
Housing is low density because you can't build higher by law, in most cases.
It's one of the socialist aspects of the UK.

~~~
altacc
> socialist aspects of the UK

I think you're thinking of the other UK, the imaginary one that right-wing
commentators make out to be a hellish nightmare of bad teeth inflicted upon
the populace by fiendishly free health care. Instead of the real UK, with it's
right-wing, capitalist, free-market friendly, populist government.

Building regulations aren't in any way socialist, they are pretty much global
and many countries, including the "freedom" loving USA, have extensive
government-mandated building codes which include height restrictions or
mechanisms to limit height.

~~~
eru
You are right that building codes aren't a sign of socialism at all.

The UK however has a pretty interventionist state. (But yes, they are less
interventionist than eg the French. Low bar, though.) And eg re-nationalising
the railways is perennial popular with the population. Luckily, no government
has been crazy enough to do it, nor has it even featured much in election
campaigns.

~~~
tomatocracy
Not sure that's right re railways. Railtrack was de facto renationalised by
the Blair government (becoming Network Rail) in the early 2000s, and we had an
election one month ago where the main opposition party campaigned on a promise
to not relet the private sector passenger franchises, ie de facto take them
back into public ownership at the end of their terms. That isn't quite all of
the railways (you've still got a few privately owned pieces of infrastructure,
freight operators and rolling stock leasing) but it's pretty close.

~~~
eru
Interesting, thanks! Please imagine I added the appropriate hedge words in my
comment above.

With your corrections, it does move Britain a bit more into the
interventionist state direction.

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gadders
I lived in a two-up, two-down in Windsor, and my wife (when I met her) had one
in Bexley.

They're nice houses. The main issue is that most now have to have an extension
on the back to house an indoor bathroom. In my house, it was ground floor
after the kitchen. In my wife's it was upstairs above a kitchen extension, but
you could only get to it after going through the main bedroom. Handy as an en-
suite, awkward if you had friends to stay.

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downtide
There's plenty of space in the UK for housing. Just go up in a plane to look.
The greenbelt curtails sprawl, and inflates housing value.

I don't think low-density has to even be that bad. Dumping the inner/town city
road network would be a huge boon, freeing that space for green leafy
walk/cycle/scooter/ways and parks.

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zelos
Combined with the enormous levels of NIMBYism in the UK, it's amazing anything
gets built at all.

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downtide
The floor plan shows a knock through, that's quite non-typical, non-original.

