Living it up across the pond
- Laura Moore: Housebroken
- December 12, 2023
- 365
Several years ago, Taller Half and I decided to visit England. We had a grand time and learned a lot about English houses.
Our first night there was spent in a bed-and-breakfast that had been lived in continually for 500 years. She was a tall, skinny old lady, built to protect from the elements and frequent marauders — not for comfort.
Despite her age, that old girl had been given bathrooms, real bathrooms. Up a steep staircase at the end of a narrow hall was a clean little room fitted with a comfortable bed and a miniature bathroom, which was a small sink and a narrow but deep tub. Next to that little room was another little room, called the water closet, that held the toilet.
Many old houses in England have very interesting plumbing. Very few houses have showers, perhaps because of the lack of hot water pressure. For some strange reason, no English house, either old or young, seems to have effective hot water pressure. In England, showers come with the weather, not the bathroom.
British houses and American houses are very similar in two ways; they are both expensive and demanding.
There are some more interesting differences. For instance, the Brits do not put screens in their windows. They are firmly convinced that no bug would dare enter without permission. Sadly, that attitude does not allow for the occasional ill-mannered bug which does not give a hoot about proper behavior. Every country has a few of those.
The most startling difference between British and American houses is longevity. A great number of inhabited houses over there live an amazingly long time. Few houses here in the States have such long life spans.
Do the Brits know something we don’t? Is high hot water pressure to blame for not allowing so many of our houses to age gracefully? How many places do you know of that are over several hundred years old and are still being inhabited?
We knew of one such place, but it collapsed before it reached the age of 200. Fortunately, its occupants had just moved out.