The continuing story of the house Joe and Mary Ann Scott lived in for over 50 years and the families that have lived here since.*
As you would expect the place has been much knocked about, not least by John who lived here for just a few short years in the 1970s.
In that time he ripped out the two downstairs fire places, many of the features including the picture rails and covered every room wood chip.
Not that back in 1974 I would have done any differently in fact I own up to talking out a perfectly good wooden airing cupboard from the bathroom.
Such are the acts of vandalism on a proud old house.
One of the fire places was replaced in 1984 which is a lesson in history.
It had come from east Manchester where fire places, original baths and toilet fittings were being taken out of houses which then found their way to south Manchester to replace ones that had been pulled out a decade before from houses in Chorlton, Withington and Didsbury.
In our case this included one of those very old and very heavy cast iron baths, and the lead water cistern encased in a wooden frame with its slightly rusting iron fittings, which perched high up on the wall.
I had entertained ideas that we would use a length of copper pipe from the cistern to the lavatory but the builders insisted we used lead, so we got their pipe from their old lavatory and in exchange they got our 1970s low level plastic cistern
It took longer to reinstate the other fire place, but a few years ago this is what we did and what follows is just the story of that change.
Now there will be those who mutter self indulgent nonsense, but I think there is a point here which put simply is that houses should be respected as should the original intentions of the person who built it and first lived in it.
Compromises have to be made in the light of changing living styles but not at the expense of the house.
Otherwise you may like us spend a lot of time undoing what has been thoughtlessly done.
Neither of the fireplaces resemble the originals but these were not very attractive and dominated the rooms, so I suppose sometimes a little innovation is acceptable.
Of course the devil was in the detail and it took many visits to Insitu to resolve our differences over which to go for, but in the end we struck a deal where by I got the fire place surround and Tina the tiles which worked.
Picture; from the collection of Andrew Simpson
*The Story of a house, http://chorltonhistory.blogspot.co.uk/search/label/The%20story%20of%20a%20house
In that time he ripped out the two downstairs fire places, many of the features including the picture rails and covered every room wood chip.
Not that back in 1974 I would have done any differently in fact I own up to talking out a perfectly good wooden airing cupboard from the bathroom.
Such are the acts of vandalism on a proud old house.
One of the fire places was replaced in 1984 which is a lesson in history.
In our case this included one of those very old and very heavy cast iron baths, and the lead water cistern encased in a wooden frame with its slightly rusting iron fittings, which perched high up on the wall.
I had entertained ideas that we would use a length of copper pipe from the cistern to the lavatory but the builders insisted we used lead, so we got their pipe from their old lavatory and in exchange they got our 1970s low level plastic cistern
Now there will be those who mutter self indulgent nonsense, but I think there is a point here which put simply is that houses should be respected as should the original intentions of the person who built it and first lived in it.
Compromises have to be made in the light of changing living styles but not at the expense of the house.
Otherwise you may like us spend a lot of time undoing what has been thoughtlessly done.
Neither of the fireplaces resemble the originals but these were not very attractive and dominated the rooms, so I suppose sometimes a little innovation is acceptable.
*The Story of a house, http://chorltonhistory.blogspot.co.uk/search/label/The%20story%20of%20a%20house
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