to think that boarding houses could come back into fashion (not boarding schools)

[NeedToChangeName]

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/newsbeat-66591376

This news report got me thinking. When my Dad was a student, he rented a bedroom in someone's house, alongside other students. Quite simple accommodation without facilities that people might expect nowadays, but it was affordable and convenient. And extra income for the landlady

I wonder if this arrangement might become popular again, with (1) students / young professionals struggling to find suitable accommodation and (2) home owners struggling to pay mortgages

@OnionBhajis is correct. The HMO licensing. If three or more people are sharing facilities who are not "one household" then it becomes a HMO. Which may not require planning (is permitted development for 6 people), but does require licensing.

This could put people off as there are requirements (such as fire requirements) as well as council inspections (and I presume costs to pay for registering!).

I think it's a great idea when student accommodation is expensive/scarce. My dad used to live with various landladies when he was a student.

@ChristAndHisBike
What they ate? You're forgetting the lady doctors and their beavers!
😁

*'Beaver' being their name for a mid-morning snack.

Do you mean this sort of thing, OP?

When I got my first job after uni, (over 40 years ago) I lived here for about 6 months, until I found a house share with some friends from work http://westboroughhouse.co.uk/

There was a housekeeper then, who did the cooking, (though it looks like it’s now self catering) we had an evening meal included in the rent and I think breakfast, though I’m not sure as I never ate breakfast!

My Gran had rooms in Bloomsbury. She had a scullery, a sitting room and a bedroom. She shared the loo and bathroom with all of the other occupants of the building, who had a similar set up. There was an elderly man next door to her, who had the same and smaller rooms for single people upstairs (don’t think these had a kitchen, more of a bedsit).

Books with either lodgings or boarding houses (very, very common for respectable women who worked in london)

The Making if a Marchioness
The Heel of Achilles by EM Delafield
The Girls of Slender Means (I think? Maybe a women’s hostel)
The L Shaped Room.

It was definitely a huge thing for about a century - as the clerk/office/shop workers classes emerged.

The Country Girls by Edna O’Brien was another one.

Just like a house of multiple occupancy surely? There are several big old houses here each with 10+ bedrooms in them.

Yes, I agree @NeedToChangeName

A relation of mine owned a couple of boarding houses (and a coal business etc) in the early C20. These were enormous Victorian terrace houses and mostly housed single people (I checked the census).

I think there was an article recently (if anyone remembers where from?) about the number of over 50s house sharing, and renting rooms, being on the rise.

Surely boarding houses arose out of a fairly unique set of social and economic circumstances? For much of the twentieth century property was relatively cheap with lots of large, unmodernised Victorian houses - many of which have now been converted into flats. Plus the impact of the two world wars e.g. a war-widow might decide to rent out rooms rather than struggling to get into the workplace with non-existent childcare

@BadSkiingMum Yes I think you're right, and HMO licensing would also deter many people from operating boarding houses now

Hickory Dickory Dock (Agatha Christie) has a student boarding house.

I think Helen might have lived in one at the beginning of Riders as well, which is what, the 70s?

Going back to Agatha Christie, Third Girl is about a flatshare.

Yes, and there's one with a student boarding hall which I think is AC being quite daringly modern. Or is Hickory Dickory Dock that one, I get them confused.

The one with the flat with the office-working girls is definitely her being 'modern' - in fact that's one of the things i love most about AC is that her books span forty years and the social changes are incredible - from nice young gals at home in the vicarage types to independent young working women living in flats (even if inevitably they have to be secretaries to the Important Men) - she definitely shows young women getting on with life.

Some of the EM Delafield ones (Tension is a great one) show how precarious boarding house / clerking life was for young women in the first decades of the last century - yes they could be completely independent from their families for the first time but the boarding house fees took up most of their salaries, then the standards of dress were high with all the problems of laundry etc, no opportunities to get career progression, no chance to get out and meet nice young men (although they must have met men in the office?) to marry and get away. It was not as much drudgery as being a servant, but pretty bleak.

Really, what with posh people having servants and servants living in, and many in betweens living in hostels or boarding houses or digs, far fewer people must have actually lived alone!

A boarding house would be, in my mind, like the home the mother runs in Forest Gump?

A shared house is people of the same age/background.

A lodger to me is one room in a house and can be of any age.

Pretty much this.
Years ago I took a job in a city I didn’t know. My employer arranged “digs” where a landlady & husband lived but rented out a bedroom or two on a daily rate. She also provided breakfast & an evening meal. Shared bathroom and we paid a small bit extra for a daily hot bath because the immersion heater had to “go on!”
I suppose now I’d be called a lodger except I had no access to cooking or food facilities. I went home every Friday for the weekend.
It was lonesome. I was glad to move out. 🥹

Boarding Houses where food is also provided are less easy to set up now as you need food hygiene certificates etc so as someone else has mentioned some complexes for older people or those with special needs who need a bit of support might do this. However on a small scale for a homeowner like they used to it would now generally just be a lodger.

We had lodgers in our house for about four years after my husband was made redundant. It meant we could stay in our home and not have to sell. We had workers newly moved to the country, people relocating to the area, for a while someone who needed a place Mon - Thursday as he didn’t want to relocate family but had a job too far from the family home, only ever had two at a time max, our dining room was turned into their living room.

If the house owner is living in the property I am not sure it falls under HMO regs. Lodgers are allowed, even encouraged. The problem is more likely to be the provision of “board”, which could bring you under hotel type regs.

I can very particularly think of a book/episode of Poirot (though the place is described more as being a hostel but fits the above description) where it turns out that the owner/landlady is involved in making the students living there smuggling things in rucksacks they've bought, without their knowledge.

Edit: I see someone already mentioned Hickory Hickory Dock as an example. Great minds and all that! 🤣

Thinking about boarding house novels, quite a lot of the ones I've read end up with the house catching fire, which suggests that this was a common worry and explains (and makes me appreciate) the stricter HMO regs of the present day.

Like digs? Or a HMO (house of multiple occupancy) The difference between a HMO and a shared house is that an HMO has individual locks on the bedroom doors, and might also have room numbers- HMOs are very common.

If you are talking about HMO where meals of provided, I would call that a motel.

Weren't boarding houses holiday accommodation in places like Blackpool?
One step up from b&b as guests would also get an evening meal. I'm sure I've heard that once breakfast was over guests were expected to leave the premises until it was time for the evening meal, whatever the weather was like.

It’s a shame they no longer exist-I remember a post on here from a mum of a highly intelligent autistic son who struggled to cope with day to day living. A boarding house would have been perfect.
Thibking about it the landlady would have to pass stringent health and hygiene rules nowadays to cater for residents -might be why it’s out of fashion.

I'd call that digs too but no idea where I learnt the term. I lived in a room like that for the last year of my A Levels with two students and the landlady did some laundry and left breakfast out too. You weren't allowed in the lounge, just the kitchen and dining room. It was a bit depressing but was a good halfway house at just turned 17.

Have you read ‘Paying Guests’ by E. F. Benson - who also wrote the Mapp and Lucia series.
A very light and funny read - and probably available for peanuts if you’ve got a Kindle.

Also Monica Dickens wrote about her experience in a boarding house in My Turn To Make The Tea.

DH boarded when he was a PhD student with a couple for a year. It was a very grand house and sounds like the woman was definitely suffering from empty nest syndrome and had three students lodgers and they were very spoilt apparently. He said it was the best place he ever lived when young. Her DS had moved overseas and as this is about 32 years ago there was no FaceTime and phone calls were horrendously expensive overseas back then.