Laburnum Terrace

The mystery of the connecting doors

There is one mystery about the construction of the terrace which affects all the houses

Why was there a line of connecting doorways between all the houses?  The houses have signs of a doorway in each party wall, connecting it to the houses next door.  In the single fronted houses, one doorway is in the hallway, the other opposite in a recess in the rear room.  All these doorways have been bricked up.

There was a suggestion that the houses may have formed a cottage pin-making business where each house was used for different stages of the pin-making process, and the products moved between houses as necessary.  However this was disproved when the census records showed that the houses were occupied by people with many different occupations, none of them with any connection to pin-making or similar processes.

Another possibility has arisen following the findings of the census records.  It is quite noticeable in the earlier years, that many of the the houses were occupied by members of families with close connections to the Hodges family who built them.  It is possible that the doorways were created to facilitate access between the houses.

but the mystery remains....

This page was last updated: 23/03/2007