The humble outside lavatory ….. here in Chorlton ….. wondering how many have survived

Now for anyone who grew up or lived in a 2 up two down property, this brick structure will be familiar.

Declan's brick structure, 2021

And for those who  wonder what I mean by a two up two down property, they were the basic model for many working class homes in the 19th century, and consisted of two downstairs rooms, one of which would be the kitchen with two upstairs room.

You can still find them across the country in our towns, cities,  and villages and with a bit of tender care and attention still do the business.

You entered directly off the street into the front room, although at the posher end of the market, there would be a small glass vestibule which took up a little of the space in the front room but did afford a bit of privacy.

New Gates, typical Manchester Court, 1908

At the rear was a small yard complete with an outside lavatory, which before mains sewage were supplied with a pail which would be collected by the night soil man.

Ours in Ashton Under Lyne still retained an aperture in the back wall where the pail could be left for collection.

And that is where Declan Maguire comes into the story, because yesterday he sent over this picture, adding, “Hi Andrew, after your article on the few air raid shelters still surviving in back yards, here’s a photo of another backyard survivor from Victorian times. 

I wonder how many houses in this area still have one of these? 

I can think of times when I was sharing my home with teenager ‘bathroom blockers’ when it could have been useful for me.

I wonder how would they be referred to in estate agent pitches; “many original Victorian features”? “bathroom and second separate toilet?

It would  be interesting to find out if many have survived locally, whether in working order, or as tool/storage sheds. 

I’m old enough, (born in 1960 in Belfast, another red brick Victorian city), to have used these during family visits to grandparents and other relatives. I can remember the new WC being installed inside my maternal grandparent’s 3 storey terraced home around 1970. The photo was taken in one of the side streets off Sandy Lane, the house is currently up for sale & unoccupied”.

Whiteman's Yard Derby, 1882-83

And being a tad older, I remember visiting my grandparent home in Derby which was a conversion from two one up and one down properties into a single home.  The rear of the house had opened up to a small shared courtyard where there were several of these little brick privies.

Manchester Corporation had been in the forefront of eliminating the one up one down as early as the 1850s, along with cellar dwellings.  Other cities like Leeds tolerated the one up and one down into the 20th century.

As for our humble brick lavatory it would be the coming of mains water that would banish the weekly visit of the night soil man.

That said in 1894 in Manchester,  “there were 24,300 water closets,  78,486 pail closets, and 35, 700 midden privies, and even by 1927 there were 230,046 water closets, and still 1,108 pail closets and thirty-five privies”.*

All of which beings us back to Declan’s brick “outhouse”, and Chorlton-cum-Hardy.  By the time his old house and most of two up two down stock were built in Chorlton in the late 19th century, the township had mains sewage.

But this was a new thing.  The first pipe bringing in mains water arrived in 1962 at the request of 16 ratepayers living on Edge Lane, while the local sewage works was only developed in the 1870s.  Before then people used privies, and obtained their drinking water from wells, or surface water.  

So when Stockton Range was built on Edge Lane, they were built with interior wells.

But the great housing boom which started in the early 1860s, and the much bigger provision of houses from the 1880s was only possible because of the arrival of piped drinking water and an effective sewage system.

Some historians have pointed to the arrival of the railway in 1880 and the corporation tram two decades later, but without the basics of water and sewage it is difficult to see how that housing boom could have taken off.

Pictures; A little brick outhouse, 2021, from the collection of Declan Maguire, Whiteman's Yard, detail of the OS Map of Derby 1882-83, supplied by Derby Local Studies Library http://www.derbyshire.gov.uk/leisure/local_studies/  and New Gates, 1908, m8316,  courtesy of Manchester Libraries, Information and Archives, Manchester City Council, http://images.manchester.gov.uk/index.php?session=pass

*E. M. Brockbank, The Book of Manchester & Salford, 1929, quoted by John J Parkinson- Bailey, Manchester An Archetctural History, 2000, page 40