The Bingham Love Affair with its 500 Terraced Houses

Call me old fashioned, but I do like the terraced house.   In fact, I have done some research that I hope you will find of interest my Bingham property market blog reading friends!

In architecture terms, a terraced or townhouse is a style of housing in use since the late 1600’s in the UK, where a row of symmetrical / identical houses share their side walls. The first terraced houses were actually built by a French man, Monsieur Barbon around St. Paul’s Cathedral within the rebuilding process after the Great Fire of London in 1666.  

The majority of our Bingham terraced houses were built in the Victorian era.  Built on the back of the Industrial Revolution, with people flooding into the towns and cities for work in Victorian times, the terraced house offered decent livable accommodation away from the slums. An interesting fact is that the majority of Victorian Bingham terraced houses are based on standard design of a ‘posh’ front room, a back room (where the family lived day to day) and scullery off that.  Off the scullery, a door to a rear yard, whilst upstairs, three bedrooms (the third straight off the second).  Interestingly, the law was changed in 1875 with the Public Health Act and each house had to have 108ft of livable space per main room, running water, it’s own outside toilet and rear access to allow the toilet waste to be collected (they didn’t have public sewers in those days in Bingham – well not at least where these ‘workers’ terraced houses were built).

It was the 1960’s and 70’s where inside toilets and bathrooms were installed (often in that third bedroom or an extension off the scullery) and gas central heating in the 1980’s and replacement Upvc double glazing ever since.

Looking at the make up of all the properties in Bingham, some very interesting numbers appear.  Of the 4,018 properties in Bingham …

2,019 are Detached properties (50.2%)

1,074 are Semi Detached properties (26.7%)

571 are Terraced / Town House properties (14.2%)

354 are Apartment/ Flat’s (8.8%)

When it comes to values, the average price paid for a Bingham terraced house in 1995 was £39,200 and the latest set of figures released by the land Registry states that today that figure stands at £158,750, a rise of 305% - not bad when you consider detached properties in Bingham in the same time frame have only risen by 146%.

But then a lot of buy to let landlords and first time buyers I speak to think the Victorian terraced house is expensive to maintain.  I recently read a report from English Heritage that stated maintaining a typical Victorian terraced house over thirty years is around sixty percent cheaper than building and maintaining a modern house- which is quite fascinating don’t you think!

Don’t dismiss the humble terraced house – especially in Bingham!  Keep an eye on the blog for potential investment properties that come onto the market.