Halls & Corridors

In one bedroom ‘half-house’ flats, the main front door was shared and each flat was accessed from a common hallway. The downstairs flat had its own door but upstairs dwellings were without a private door until flats were modernised from 1954 onwards. In ground floor flats, coal was stored downstairs in the hall cupboard under the front stairs, while tenants in upper flats had room under the back stairs with access from the garden.

Warner dwellings were either two storey (the majority) or in the case of some Northcote or Carisbrooke villas, on three levels, all necessitating the inclusion of an internal wooden staircase off the hallway. Upstairs flats had an additional set of stairs for access to the back garden, either within the body of the flat or externally in the form of cast iron steps.

© Kirstin Sibley, 2014