Can you get yo your neighbours via the loft?

[blacknredsweeties]

Just wondered how common it is?

I could in one house I lived it till I bricked it up. Was a victorian mid terrace.

End terrace. No.

When we bought our 1870s terrace 20 years ago, you could go along the whole terrace of 8 through the loft. We had loft walls built, and so did another couple of neighbours after that.

Another friend bought a similar aged house about 30 years ago and same situation.

My brother’s house is like this. The whole street is linked via the lofts. When he was a student he and his friends would run up and down the houses. I’ve also lived in a similar street, but people started bricking up the gaps. I have a feeling the joined loft spaces might be a fire risk, as well as a security risk.

My cat climbed through to our neighbours loft in our old house!

My student house had an escape hatch to the neighbours attic.

A cat could but not a human. The loft has a bricked wall but with a small, roughly one brick sized, gap at the bottom.

They were made like that as a fire safety measure so people could escape.

Not unless I learn to fly, no.

I'm in a Georgian terraced cottage - can't get through lofts here.

No. Weirdly it was a requirement of our mortgage that no access could be made via the loft from our property to the nextdoors.
1901 row of terraces.

In one house as a child in the 80s we discovered that we didn’t have a water tank in the loft but the connected neighbours loft had two with one of them supplying us

Whilst they had been away on holiday the previous owner had relocated the water tank due to low water pressure

On discovering this they fitted a lock to the hatch

When we left it was still like it

I've never lived in a house with one but linked attics are a plot device in The Magician's Nephew by CS Lewis. Loved that book.

Years ago I heard of a family where the children said they could hear noises above them at night. It was from a house about four doors along, being used to house illegal immigrants. The police found rows of mattresses right along the row of attics.

The thought freaks me out

I tried looking for a photo on Google of several terraces. I found this.

Yes my husband put our Christmas tree back up the loft and saw our neighbour doing the same thing a few feet away.

We used to be able to do this. Semi detached cottages built in 1897 then our neighbours built a firewall and only a cat could squeeze through now.

This is exactly the first thing I thought of when I saw the title of this thread!

No, in an end terrace 1930s build

I seem to remember a case where a girl disappeared and her body was found concealed at the end of the loft.

I remember a story told by my mum of her friend who lived in a block of 6 houses all lofts joined together. It was discovered that one of the neighbours had drilled spy holes into all the bathrooms. Horrendous! 😲

I do occasionally wonder what motivates people to post stuff like this and the illegal immigrants post.

Can you provide a link to a news story?

I’d be interested to know how many of these interconnected lofts are still there. It’s one of those things which MN likes to freak out about but I suspect isn’t all that common nowadays.

We can (1930s semi) but there'd be no point as there'd be no way down

No, thank GOD. Our neighbour is a nightmare and I dread to think what she'd get up to up there.