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Georgian Terrace Housing

Terrace Town Housing was very typical of the building constructed during the Georgian era. During the eighteenth century Britain’s urban areas expanded enormously. The high population density made it necessary to pack a lot of housing into small spaces. This gave rise to the terrace house which enabled a whole street to take on a uniform appearance and wholeness, yet keeping the house size small.

Most Georgian terraces were brick built with sloping slate roofs, hidden behind stone parapets. In Bath, famous for it’s Georgian terraces and crescents, local stone was plentiful and brick was used less.

Georgian terrace houses might typically be build to include the following:-

Short flight of steps up to the front door
Front door panelled
Fanlight over front door
four storeys
thick fire walls between each house and it’s neighbour - these dividing walls carried the weight of the chimney stacks
important rooms on the first floor
windows almost exclusively sash windows
standard sized glass panes, separated by thin glazing bars made of wood
ground floor windows were short (for stability)
First floor windows were tall and elegant
Second floor windows shorter than on the first floor
Top floor windows were almost square

Terraces might be set out in straight lines or squares around a central communal green space, or in crescents and oval “circuses”. These might be landscaped with trees and gardens or include vistas and avenues in brick and stone.

Landowners would build rows of terrace houses, knowing that once they were completed they could be rented out to the wealthy middle and upper classes. This led to some successful architects becoming developers themselves, Woods & Dance and the Adams Brothers for example.

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