British suburbs

[David]

 Melody wrote:
> 
>  I was actually shocked and wondered...do y'all have suburbs
> M> like that?  Are they full of the same house repeating over and 
over
> M> all the same color all the same style?  How terribly 
depressing.  No
> M> back yard.  Barely a front yard.  Is this normal for England?
> 

Richard Thorpe:
> For some parts of England, yup.. Lots of cheap post-war housing I
> believe. Our house is similar to all those down the street, altho we
> have a back garden, no front garden to speak of, and the
> outside/insides are diff.. the layout is the same tho..
> 
> We don't have the same sort of room to make diverse houses as other
> countries do :) Have to use up all the space economically!

The more recent stuff is usually a bit more diverse, though often in 
a glued-on sort of way.  You know, 'we put a gable on that one so 
we'll give this one a circular window'.

I think some Victorian and pre-war housing tended if anything to be 
more uniform: not cheapness as such but paternalistic mill- and mine-
owners recognising that aesthetics (and gardens) would be lost on the 
lower orders, whom Darwin had usefully shown to be slightly better-
dressed monkeys.  But a lot in Surrey was speculators inventing 
suburbs and railways to go with them.

The Movie!Dursleys' house is a bit odd: on the outside, soulless 
eighties cul-de-sac housing; on the inside, soulless thirties endless-
straight-lines housing, which is what canon implies.

David