Shared loft spaces in terrace

[1foot2feet]

Posting for traffic.
Turns out my loft space is shared with every other house on the terrace, there's no wall at all between the lofts. There's now a mouse infestation in our loft spaces.
Anyway, is this legal/against regulations?Can't find anything definitive online. I rent, so can't do anything about it myself so would need to go through my landlord but don't want to bring it up if there's nothing saying you can't have shared loft spaces, also I'm pretty sure it invalidates my house insurance!

Another fucking ZOMBIE thread.

Massive fire risk, I thought rented properties had to have things like this sorted. Get advice.... Surely it's his home insurance.... Your contents.?

There was a thread on here years ago in which the OP was finding strange poos in her toilet (she lived alone) and it turned out that someone was accessing her house through the loft space...

My house was like this, but roofer built a wall there when they were Replacing the roof. It’s a fire risk but not illegal that I’m aware of for older properties.

Killing the mice in the loft won’t work, somebody must have mice in their house downstairs. Mice go and live in loft spaces by crawling up the cavity wall and they only do that when their parents kick them out of the nest downstairs. If you kill the upstairs mice when the downstairs mice reproduce again they will start the cycle again

I know this is a zombie thread, etc, but this is just fascinating to me! Very good creepy story potential of being able to walk the length of your whole street, and essentially have access to anybody’s house. Is never heard of it before.

The Virgin Suicides by Jeffrey Eugenides uses a similar idea, but with storm shelters. There’s a kid who explores his entire neighbourhood by using the storm shelter system.

Anyway, just what is the point of these shared loft spaces, though? It’s not like you’re going to store anything in them, in case it gets nicked, so why bother to build them that way in the first place?

That was commonly used up until the late 1800's as a means to reduce the damp air entering under the tiles. By 1930 they stopped using that system permantly due to the introduction of felt roofing. If you have felt roofing now you should block off your lft space with your neighbou's in order to reduce any fire risk from one property to your neighbours. At the moment it is a serious fire risk.

Would love to know what you were looking up to come across this very specific zombie thread and your answer @Warrenicus!

Still totally normal. I can walk through a few loft spaces there is a fire break wall every few houses or so.

We lived in an ancient house as a child, with shared loft space, Dad nailed it shut, as when they got up one morning the hatched door had moved off its setting.
They are classed as fire hazards now.

My mum lives in a Victorian terrace that had a shared loft space with the place next door (a business).

When the top floor next door was turned into a flat (not a loft room) mum and the business owners had to agree to brick it up, which they did. She noticed the difference on the heating bill!

I know this is a Zombie thread and that it has already been mentioned, but I also came onto mention the Magician's Nephew - prequel to the Lion the Witch and Wardrobe.

A friend of mine has a shared roof space and says she'll have to brick it up before she moves, so hopes her neighbour will move first and have to do it. Not sure why it wasn't required when she bought, as it was only about 4 years ago.

My father was a building surveyor and told me those facts back in the 1970's sometime, after I came across some shared loft space in a freinds house.

These shared loft spaces also make me think of poor Tia Sharp, whose step grandfather used this layout to his advantage

This is the set up in the first Narnia book, the Magician's Nephew! The one before the Lion, the Witch etc. Nothing to add other than that