Ruining traditional houses should be illegal?

Maybe there should be a simpler way or an annual invitation for buildings to be listed. A process where anyone can propose buildings, whole streets etc.

A step above a conservation area.

If you have this, there needs to be meaningful penalties for a breach. In very extreme cases, you lose ownership of the property.

The endless rows of Victorian terraces lining street after street across the UK - so monotonous and dreary.

Oh bore off you know that’s not the point of the thread you’re just being facetious for no reason

People don't want new builds as the rooms are smaller.

I trust all these people who are restoring traditional houses are ripping out the bathrooms and kitchens, having the electricity and gas disconnected then investing in oil lamps, we need to be authentic you know.

My parents have a victorian house, I actually couldn't believe it when I last visited and saw dad's knocked out all 6 fireplaces. I think it's only the hall tiles that are still original. It's really sad.

Meh each to their own. We were advised to remove our Victorian fireplaces because they weren’t uk to building standards. Were cheap and poorer quality because we’re just in a bid standard Victoria terrace which was a worker house back then and often it was the apprentice builders that built and finished the upstairs…. Nothings straight and flat. It’s a bit of a nightmare when the kids play marble run!

we tried in the past to sand and use the original floorboards but the sofa fell through then one day. We’ve been warned the ceiling will probably also fall down upstairs at some point in the future so next time we decorate I think we will take it down anyway

That’s true. We’ve had a listed property and you can’t do much.

I’d love a Dormer loft conversion for the extra bedroom but I have a 1930s semi and every house that’s had it done up the street looks shit.

Horrible black windows and awful dormer extensions that ruin the character of the home and wonder if there is breach of planning

also cutting down trees in gardens is another bugbear

You can do what you like with the garden and interior, so ripping up of the fabric means it’s probably lost forever (unless someone can be bothered to pay a fortune to have it all reinstated). Even the exterior can be altered to a large extent, it depends of the council is willing to take action.

Such a shame!

It’s a form of ventilation too which is a good thing 😊

🫣 you’ve just described my house. We did lose a horrible wooden conservatory though 😬

When I was a kid in the late sixties and seventies, there was this DIY bloke who had a page in the weekly TV Times - Barry Bucknell, I think - telling you how to cover up oak panelled doors with two-ply and how to take out tiled Victorian fireplaces and break them up to be carted away. Picture rails were the work of the devil and leaded light windows were tantamount to a big sign saying 'we're so oldfashioned we've got consumption'. You couldn't give away a Victorian house back then. Nobody could believe that in the modern world anyone would want to live in such a monstrosity.

When the OH and I bought an Edwardian house thirty years later, we spent the first two years seeking out and refitting old fireplaces and restoring picture rails.

Fashions change. I agree that it's a pity that original features are torn out. I also think it a shame when Georgian-style windows are put in a Sixties bungalow.

But I don't see how you can legislate against it. And I don't think that it would be fair to do so. Because who would then adjudicate as to what could be done and what couldn't? It'd be an administrative labyrinth and cost a fortune.

Agree. I’ve never understood why, if people want a modern house, they don’t just buy a new build. I don’t really see the point in spending so much money trying to modernise an old property — it will always end up looking a bit strange.We’re currently spending a fortune redoing our old house because the previous owner “modernised” it — destroyed the fireplaces, painted the beams, and put ugly carpet over beautiful wooden floors.
I love houses with history and I have quite an antique taste. A grey, ultra-modern house filled with plastic IKEA furniture is my absolute nightmare. I understand that people have different tastes, but an old house will always look a bit bizarre when it’s filled with modern features.

Agree, those grey laminate floors 😱
Also, it’s worse than that, if the house has high ceilings, which many of these beautiful Victorian houses - (do maybe 2.8 m-3m) they take all the floors out and put a third one in, creating little cells, i.e. what was a three bedroom family house is now an eight bedroom hmo

There was a lovely , unique , 1900 house which I used admire when walking our dog a few years ago now. It came up for sale , in fact we put in an offer on it as it had real character. We didn’t get it unfortunately.
The new owners then built a horrible garage and a ridiculously awful fence completely out of character to the original historic home, I had to stop walking our dog passed it as it upset me to see what their vandalism had done to a beautiful house. They could have added railings to the original wall, that would have looked in keeping , and put the garage to the side where there was space, I think they pay so much for the house they did everything else on the cheap. The neighbors in the area were angry & disgusted by the vandalism, but the so called council planning didn’t give a shit. Very sad to see so I totally agree with you OP

I live in an old Victorian farmhouse (husband is a farmer so no high income). It is expensive to keep warm, and a money pit. I can understand wanting to rip it all out and make it easier to keep warm and clean. I've not done so, but get the temptation. Also restoring a house and keeping original features IME costs more than ripping out.

I think if people want to make their homes easier to maintain (PVC windows), warmer (LVT flooring), let them if it isn't listed. Building methods change (lime mortar for example is costlier than standard) as do fashions. It's only bricks and mortar at end of day, it's people that matter.

Well, if houses are listed or in conservation areas, or has article 4 directions, ‘ruining’ them is illegal depending on the level of protection.

I’d like to see the use of plastic grass or topiary made illegal, but there we are.

We have a fireplace in every room but we don’t use them and have a heat pump and solar panels, electric cars and don’t fly. 🤷🏻‍♀️ There is no correlation between wanting to preserve some of the history of a property and being a climate change denier.

Eurgh! We visited an outlying area of London recently where on one residential road of 1930s houses hardly any still had any bare earth showing in their front gardens. Most were covered in asphalt. I hadn't thought about astroturf in the back gardens. It's so short-sighted given the weird changes going on in our weather and the very poor state of the sewage system.

I don’t disagree with your principles though in practice it’s not possible. I honestly thought people had stopped taking out period features. We’ve tried to keep as much of out period house as possible but in replacing the single glazed windows we’ll be losing some coloured, not stained, glass. We are replacing with wood windows as that’s the only way of keeping the other period features round the windows.

I’m with you, OP! I bought a very old house a couple of months ago which has basically had every single original feature ripped out. I’m now in the process of lots of research and professional advice to restore it. I just can’t get my head around some of the things the previous owner did. Their choice though, I guess!

Also my estate agent told me that if people have dogs, they often leave a residual dog poo smell which is grim.

It’s quite funny that people moan about not wanting a house that looks the same as everyone else’s or they “all look the same” completely ignoring the fact that Victorian’s were the original copy paste & repeat house builder, building rows upon rows of identical houses.