Victorians were really good at engineering, so why did they build so many 3 & 4 storey houses on clay with only 1m foundations?

[JamBiscuitBun]

The qualities of clay can't have been new knowledge in Victorian times. And look at some of the large and beautiful things they built. Yet near me, there's row after row of 4 storey terraced houses with pretty serious subsidence issues because they have little-to-no useful foundation. Why is this?

A) those houses weren’t built with the expectation that they would have to last 150+ years

b) I live in south west London where there are thousands of streets of Victorian 3 and 4 storey houses built on clay and very very few of them have subsidence issues. A bit of movement, yes but I think far more structural issues have been caused by WW2 bombs than clay issues

those houses weren’t built with the expectation that they would have to last 150+ years

This

I find the mindset hard to understand because I don't imagine pulling down a new-build (at some point in the future) today. I guess I've grown up with the thought that houses are mended and carry on indefinitely.

They were built usually by individual builders. Builders bought one or two plots of land and built a few houses and sold them. It made financial sense to spend money putting in things people could see like beans and stained glass and not on deep foundations.
Todays equivalent are refurbs of houses. The money is spent on what buyers can see.

They were probably used to building houses with little or no foundations and it not being a problem in the past.

Our house is built straight on to the ground in clay soil. It has cracks in it. According to our insurance company’s surveyor (we did worry), they are due to seasonal movement and nothing to worry about. However, the walls are stone with a rubble infill and capable of absorbing movement with no negative structural implications. It was built around 400 years ago.

The fact that such a huge % of our housing stock is Victorian property built on shallow foundations, and it would be more if lots of it hadn’t been demolished after the war, surely proves they were great engineers?

These houses were built before planning permission and building regs were a thing, so the quality control and design was all self policed.

And so much of it is still standing with original features in tact
I guarantee the same will not be said in 100 years about anything Barrett or Berkeley have thrown up.

I'd recommend reading the Haynes manual for the type of house. I borrowed the 1930s one from the library and learnt loads about why houses then tended to be built in a particular way!

There was a lot of money in house building and very little regulation. Speculators would just throw stuff up to make quick money. There was a fair amount of concern about it at the time. Some Victorian commentators said that the town houses in Belgravia were trashy and badly made. Interesting how perceptions change!

It's because they weren't all Isambard Kingdom Brunel.

A lot were built very quickly as cities expanded rapidly. They were thinking about the here and now, not the 21st Century.

Today’s new builds only have to have a projected lifespan of 60 years.

There are Haynes manuals for houses ? Mind blown!
Off to google .

Bugger ,now I really want one.

Speculative developers and cowboy builders have always been with us.

Well Salisbury cathedral was built on foundations only 4ft deep and it's lasted 900 years!

Love this!

Winchester cathedral was built on a raft of beech trees...

When those houses were built, labour was cheap and people were also tolerant of a certain amount of movement in houses. A slightly sloping floor wouldn't be unusual, cracks would be filled and painted, and the materials used allowed for flexibility.

Now people are adding loft extensions, building rear extensions on concrete foundations that don't move, putting in steel joists in five attics in a row, digging out basements...and the houses had walls and windows knocked out in the 1960s and we are having hot summers and wet winters...of course these things have an effect.

They are still better than new build houses in my opinion, because they can always be stitched back in line.

As a child I read about the diver who went into the foundations to shore up the foundations. I'm convinced that kicked off my claustrophobia

www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-hampshire-45761496

They were cheap stock
to house low paid workers en masse quickly
no expectation of lasting longer than the new jobs
often on land owned by the equivalent of big business- ie. The navy or etc.
and they were a step up from previous housing

I learnt so much from the one I got! They're aimed at people wanting to do up their own house (like the car versions!) so to help you understand how they're constructed and with what. I found it really interesting and I now spot all sorts of things on other houses whilst walking round the neighbourhood.

There are rows of houses with subsidence near my son, but that's due to the fact they were built on a fault, and even if slowly moving, they are still habitable 150+ years after they were built. You probably couldn't get a mortgage on most of them now and I imagine they will eventually get rebuilt. But they are all occupied and do sell on occasion.

@MrsDanversGlidesAgain I don't know how he did it, day in day out!

Loads of house like that around me. Most (including mine) were underpinned in the 80s or 90s. A 2 bed flat can sell for up to a £million. Occasionally a whole house comes on the market for several million.

For the same reason that many new houses and apartments now have poor sound insulation and barely meet the minimum standards, they have been built as cheaply as possible to maximise profit.

Houses and flats like that in the UK aren't that new as building regs changed around the beginning of this century to ensure noise insulation is put in.

An old acquaintance of mine was converting a large house into individual flats in the early 00s just after the regs had changed. He was made by building control to put noise insulation on adjoining walls and on the floors.

There as anything that had been planned, built or converted before this didn't have to have this insulation.

The regs were put in because builders/developers were really taking the piss in the 1990s using plaster board as walls between linked properties and not designing them so kitchens were over/next to kitchens etc.