Big houses, no gardens - nowhere to play.

This new house had a cloakroom, front door to corridor hall and a study measuring roughly 6 foot wide. stairs were directly behind and in line the cloakroom and the dining/kitchen behind was 12 foot wide. The kitchen was in a nook about 9ft x 6ft and the dining part about 9 x 12.

Here is a link to a floor plan to a similar new house currently being built. www.barratthomes.co.uk/range/the-norbury/

No dimensions are given, but look at the scale of the furniture to the room size and note that the kitchen is so narrow that it is only possible to have units down one size' I estimate it is about 6 foot wide, hall, roughly 3 foot wide, cloakroom the same. Total 12 ft wide.

Allsorts

I am still trying to process how a house can be just 12 feet wide as Monica said. Even a tiny terrace is wider than that.

Loads of terraces are less than 12 feet wide.

The front door opens directly into the front room. That leads into a back room. The stairs go up through the middle of the house on two turns.

A half width kitchen at the back, that nowadays leads to what was the outdoor privy and is now the bathroom.

Can’t beat the kookaburras can you ? Our locals have just had babies who are learning to laugh, quite funny.

That sounds lovely gertiejay.

I am still trying to process how a house can be just 12 feet wide as Monica said. Even a tiny terrace is wider than that.

Aussie here, I love my flat that doesn't come with a garden. It's on the 2nd floor and looks into a courtyard of beautiful mature gum trees. We have resident Kookaburra's and the bird song is deafening some days. All this within 8 mins of the city. Horses for courses

I’ve just seen this photo elsewhere. For those complaining about the density of modern homes, perhaps our perceptions are skewed! In case you can’t see the figures, modern development, density 29.7 houses per hectare, Georgian terraced houses, density 74.8 houses per hectare.

When we bought our first house in 1970 in Kent, it was an almost new build with a tiny garden which was shaded by the house by the afternoon. One day we and our 5 neighbours - it was a terrace - extended our gardens to double their length as the land behind had yet to be built on.
We fenced them and thoroughly enjoyed our longer sunnier gardens.

Recently, feeling nostalgic, I googled our
street and although the small estate has grown our extended gardens are still there.

Typically new builds round here have 4 bedrooms, 2 storeys and almost touch each other. Limited garage space and often no parking on the road outside. Wouldn’t be having many parties. I suppose you could shout across and chat with the neighbours !

There are still some houses being built with decent sized gardens. A few years ago, we bought a new build bungalow, which has a back and front garden. I wish that the back garden was smaller. We bought it off plan, so couldn’t really envisage the garden. It also has an open plan living area. We weren’t looking for that, but as there are so few bungalows being built, we went with it. I can honestly say though, that the area is definitely the size of a living room, dining room and kitchen. It could fairly easily be separated if necessary.

I agree about bedroom sizes in UK houses. Your average semi will boast two double bedrooms though one will be the master, the other a smaller double, and a box room which really is the size of a cardboard box, in some cases unable to even comfortably fit a single bed in it. This is why do many semis have resorted to loft extensions.

BlueBelle

Do you mean in Australia ?
We still have plenty of gardens here in UK all the council houses or housing association seem to have gardens too but obviously there are lots of flats and apartments that don’t
I think it depends where you live, if you live inner city there won’t be perhaps so much in the way of big gardens, but that’s always been so, I haven’t noticed any difference in towns etc
I travel to nearby towns now and then , using my free bus pass and like to sit upstairs to get a good view and there are some nice gardens front and back as you drive through, you see the difference in size in country houses and town houses but the Brits still seem to love their gardens.

Not in Cambs. They are building the "bigger" homes over 4 floors to save land, and packing them in with tiny gardens. The older smaller homes are being extended into the garden space because there are so very few bigger homes for sale and because council tax remains at the cheaper level. Just near me they have demolished a ring of garages owned by the council and are building 5 houses and a bungalow in the space

I agree too. One set of neighbours applied a roof extension AND a 'wrap around' extension to their house cutting into 4 meters of a 15 meter garden. They moved out a year later - because the garden was too small- donkeys!

When I helped my daughter buy a place, it is nearly always the smallest, what the builders call a bedroom, that is the problem with UK homes. They are not big enough to swing a cat in, as the expression goes. It is a gimmick. I think the UK should follow the US in that a room can only be called a bedroom, if it can have a wardrobe as well as a bed, well, that was said on one of those US doer upper shows, I maybe wrong.
Also headspace is another problem, in France, the floor space can only be counted when it is a certain height (something similar to a person standing).

We have a small but doable garden in a townhouse aged 23 years
However, each time I visit Australia I notice a lack of outside space with new developments and very close proximity to neighbours! A lot of of it is down to water issues so my brother says , especially in WA where he is located! There are plenty if parks though so it makes up for it
Many blocks have also been subdivided in his area

I admire well kept gardens but when people age it is difficult to look after them. We had a big house and a reasonable garden but our neighbour had a very small bungalow with a huge garden. The owners had to employ a gardener for the front garden another for the back garden and then another to look after the trees which the other gardeners could not do.
I grew up without a garden ( I lived in a tower block with a playground and access to several parks) and my friends who had gardens were not allowed to play there in case the flowers were damaged

A happy childhood does not require its own private garden

Another crazy trend (to my way of thinking) is that these massive big houses crammed together, have as many bathrooms as bedrooms.............I'm glad I don't have to clean them all!

That should read - had an extra floor fitted.

Our village is becoming full with new large housing developments, hardly big enough for a washing line in the back gardens, and so close together.

Our old family bungalow has now had a roof added, and been made wider, with a glass wall overlooking the fields and river.

Our home was easily big enough for a family of 5, the new owners have a much smaller family.

Astitchintime

The problem with building homes, whatever the size, so close together with minute gardens is that there’s nowhere for the water to soak away during heavy rainfall. Little wonder that we’re experiencing so much flooding in areas that never historically flooded.

Try telling the planners that!

Building on flood plains ...

With both working no time for gardening with children too many other activities , retired, too much travelling, if you can afford a gardener it’s different

Gardens are lovely to look at but a lot of work we know we have a large garden

The problem with building homes, whatever the size, so close together with minute gardens is that there’s nowhere for the water to soak away during heavy rainfall. Little wonder that we’re experiencing so much flooding in areas that never historically flooded.

nanna8

I love my garden and we have a traditional quarter acre block but this is no longer ‘traditional’ now. They are building a lot of large houses, all mod cons but they are crammed in together and you can look into each other’s windows. I feel sorry for the children - it was such a pleasure to play in the garden with our kids and they were so free wandering around with friends who also had gardens. It was safer then. Now they all get lifts everywhere and they seem to have lost the roaming element that I had and my children had. They are also building many multi storey flats which are nearly all hideous , no planning, no design, just boxes and no gardens at all. A balcony overlooking traffic if you are lucky.

It always amused me to hear some Australians refer to the garden as the "back yard" even though it could be the most beautiful acre plot filled with greenery an tropical plants!

We have what counts a large garden in London and the children had a wonderful time - climbing frame, swing, slide, paddling pool and sand pit. In our area all they build now are high rise apartments