The Houses of Fitzhugh Southampton - Bathrooms and Plumbing
As previously mentioned these Victorian Terrace houses were not designed with bathrooms in mind and you would probably have to move a couple of rungs further up the social scale before you found anyone experimenting with indoor plumbing at that time. Bedrooms may have had a jug and basin for the purpose of daily ablutions otherwise it was a tin bath with water heated on the range or the kitchen sink.
The installation of a bathroom in one of these houses therefore requires a little thought, most people by preference would go for an upstairs installation, but this is at the expense of at least part of a bedroom. Downstairs has therefore often been the more popular choice and here the easiest option was usually to convert the lean-to privy/coal house into an indoor toilet and bathroom.
Our solution, (perhaps considered a bit drastic by some ) was to remove the square spiral stairs and replace it with a straight stair going across the house rising from under the window in the middle room. While this sacrificed space in the middle room and the bedroom above, it also left two small rooms one on each floor in place of the old stairs in to which we just managed to fit a bath, sink and toilet upstairs and a shower and toilet downstairs and of course with one directly above the other the plumbing was made relatively easy.
The use of a gas combination boiler in the kitchen meant we did not need a tank in the attic, which leaves more space for storage and diminishes the risk of flooding from leakages.
Originally the main stop cock for
each house was on the
pavement under a metal inspection flap, these are still in use and require a
key to turn off the water. The keys are freely available and it is good to have
access to one in case of emergency. Building regulation now require a stop
cock inside the house as well, but having access to both is always a good
idea.