Report to the Local Government Board on the sanitary circumstances of the Axbridge Rural District, Somerset / by Dr. Reginald Farrar.

  • Farrar, Reginald, 1861-1921.
Date:
1910
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Report to the Local Government Board on the sanitary circumstances of the Axbridge Rural District, Somerset / by Dr. Reginald Farrar. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    by making a doorway through the party-wall and converting them into four-roomed houses, while about 500 have been voluntarily or compulsorily closed. No new back-to-back houses have been erected since 1881. The number still remaining is estimated at between 300 and 400. There are about 25 cellar dwellings in Oldham, and 60 “ under ” dwellings, that is, dwellings below or partially below the ground level on one side. They are generally let as two-roomed tenements and in most cases have through ventilation. I visited a large number of these with the medical officer of health, and the different inspectors of nuisances aud health visitors. I found them generally dark, often damp, and in most instances dirty. Many of them should be closed as unfit for habitation : several such dwellings have been closed during recent years, and the medical officer of health endeavours to prohibit the occupation of cellar-dwellings by families comprising infants or young children. In the older parts of the town are some single-roomed tenements let as u furnished ” rooms.# The furniture is of the poorest sort, and seldom worth more than a few shillings. The rent of such furnished rooms averages 4.$. to 4s. 6d. weekly, or 6s. for two rooms. Most of these tenements are dirty and squalid, but their wretched condition is due rather to the improvident and degraded habits of their occupants than to any structural defects in the dwellings. In most cases it is thriftlessness and moral defects rather than unavoidable poverty which induces people to pay the rent which might provide a decent four-roomed cottage for one or two so-called “ furnished ” apartments of this class. Here and there, in the central parts of the town, I observed old houses which showed grave structural defects, and some which ought to have been condemned as unfit for habitation. Neverthe¬ less, on the whole the corporation appear to show a fair amount of activity in dealing with insanitary houses. During the decennium 1898-1907, 119 houses were condemned as unfit for habitation ; of these 102 were closed, and 17 made habitable. During the same period 131 houses were voluntarily closed and 123 underwent struc¬ tural improvements, the majority being back-to-back houses which were made 6( through.” During my visit I observed a large number of houses undergoing improvements in respect of structure or drainage, or both, in different parts of the town. I visited the four insanitary areas specially selected for com¬ ment by the National Housing Reform Counci]. Of the two in Coldhurst Ward, the Cannon Street, Eagle Street, and Car lick Street area is being dealt with by the corporation, and at least one half of the houses in this area have been already demolished ; the Hopwood Street, Grosvenor Street, Smethurst Street, &c., area has not yet been thoroughly dealt with, but there has been general supervision and some of the houses have been closed. In the * The exact number of these “ furnished” rooms is not known, as they are not required to be registered before occupation as such, but, as far as is known, there are believed to be about 200.
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