Back to back houses..birmingham..

My late father used to live in a terraced street in East Ham, London when he was a boy in which there was no brick separating fire walls in the attick, so once in the loft you could go right down the street at that level. Bugs used to crawl through the cracks in the ceiling and there was nothing you could do about it!

I did a survey for Rochford Council, Essex in the 1960's with a view to upgrading the soil sewers in the middle of the town. Some of the gardens still had the original drains that were built about 1850 which were just soil pipes about a foot below the surface that ended at the bottom of the garden, and terminating in an open channel, into which you probably threw your bucket of .............!!!! Maybe that was an improvement on what they had before? :D :D

 

That was the case in my last house. It was a 150 year old terraced cottage, we put up breeze blocks to separate ours from next door. Had nightmares of strangers coming down from our loft hatch!