Edwardian end terrace in Sheffield

[jacob Davies]

I got the keys a couple of weeks ago to my new old house - a 1905 end terrace in Pitsmoor, Sheffield. The street is made up of typical tiny Sheffield terraces but the end terrace has the windows on the gable and has a bit of extra character (I think!). Two sisters lived in the house from the late 1940s until about two years ago. As such the house has a few more original features that is typical round here - original bay window, fireplaces, ropey lime plaster with some coving and roses that I'm hoping to save. Original doors and fittings throughout..

I'm hoping to keep as much of this as I can and I'm particularly keen to repair or replace lime plaster as far as possible. I'd like to put a new sash window in with reclaimed stone lintel if I can afford it. Once solid I'll try to decorate fairly sensitively, don't want a museum exhibit but I'd like to work with the history of the house. Will be asking lots on here I expect. Lots to learn!

 

[Stevers]

Cor, that's an absolute dead ringer for my 2nd year student digs in Frederick Rd in Sheff! It's so satisfying bringing one of these 'unspoilt' houses back to life with all the nicely detailed original joinery and plasterwork. That's what we did here, and we've got doors and windows that every person that's ever lived here has gone through and looked out of - there's something particularly nice about that sort of continuity!

Mind you on the subject of what previous inhabitants might have done or do - we had moved a huge dresser from the old scullery (surprisingly not the first place it had been) up to what would become our breakfast room. One evening after it was repaired and fitted, I was busy painting it. It was taking longer than expected (surprise!) and it was getting late when I became aware that something was taking an interest in what was going on (hairs on back of neck etc.). It was not a frightening presence, and I just carried on. The following morning I mentioned it to my wife, and she just said, yes, she'd felt the same way at times, and thought it best not to tell our young children. Can't say we've noticed anything much if at all since then though.

On another day when I was at work an old chap turned up with his family. It turned out to be one of the sons of the gas works manager (and shareholder) who had lived here until nationalisation. This chap had been awarded an MC as an officer in Burma, and from the grouping of his air gun pellet dents on various doors (still visible) must have been a crack shot! The nationalised gas board had subsequently converted the house into a maisonette and flat and he and the family were delighted to find his old home a house again, much as he remembered it, and in safe hands. One of the soldiers that lodged here had also been awarded an MC at Arnhem, but I don't have a name for him yet. Through census records (and deeds) I now have a pretty good handle on who's lived here and what they did, and even something of what happened to them, and that includes the two cottages on the site that were demolished to build our house.