Victorian house - what have they done?!

[jollywhite]

Oh my..

Period property..

How?! Where's it all gone? How should it look at the front? I'm struggling to envisage how on earth you would rectify this?

https://www.rightmove.co.uk/properties/142103456#/?channel=RES_BUY

Doesn't look Victorian, look at the ceiling height and window shape

Looks 1950s

But OP, it’s been “beautifully modernised”.

Looks 50s to me too

Th windows have all been rebuilt. Yes I can see there's an undistinguished Victorian red brick under there but oh crikey!
And that's beautifully modernised? I didn't know being the place where wallpaper came to die was now 'modern' but it's got good bones I guess. Good plot size.

I think that the original "portrait" windows have probably been replaced with more modern "landscape" ones; you see a lot of that in Victorian terraces around here abd it completely unbalances the proportions.

This one looks as though it might have had a beautiful storm porch; it's been enclosed but the brick arch is still there.

The blurb says it was built in 1868, so unless they are lying it's Victorian even though it has been modernised so much it doesn't look it.

I think there was once a bay window at the front!

Looking at the shadows/marks on the brick work it looks like they might have removed the bay windows and made them flush(?!).

Presumably that entire entrance bit didn't exist originally?

It's the least Victorian looking Victorian house I've ever seen. Inside does not look modernised.

I wouldn’t be selling the Victorian aspects. They’ve been destroyed.

I would suspect that some years ago, the front elevation on the first floor was collapsing into the bay window space on the ground floor, and something had to be done. It hasn't been done all that sympathetically though, has it?

To be honest, looking at the other properties in the street, it was a bog-standard design for that era, and they haven't destroyed anything particularly of architectural note. There's very little left of the original house, and it could be a lot worse.

I love Victorian properties - right now, i'm literally speechless! Who on earth messed this up to this extent?!

Where would you even start!

Yes, I can see elements of a previous bay window..maybe where the front door is is an extension??

Yep, they have well and truly "modernised" it. All the sash windows removed and replaced with casement style windows, ceilings lowered, no trace of any original mouldings or ceiling roses. It looks very much like the style of a 1950s built house. If you really want Victorian fixtures and fittings you are going to have to source and refit them, but the outside is still not going to look Victorian due to the way they have extended the property.

You can see where the bay window was in the front wall. All the brickwork between ground level up to the downstairs window and between the top of that and the upstairs one, all the brickwork is different. It probably used to look like the bay window in the house next door.

£400k?! For that?! 🤣

The ceiling height seems victorian. The chimney breasts making rooms awkward shape ditto. Random fireplaces in bedrooms are IMO not a great feature and just reduce usable walls.

It's the windows. They look very small and 1970s. It depends if the room sizes suit you. One of the good thing about more modern houses (before about 1990 where sheer greed led to shoebox being built) was the larger squarer rooms. Victorian houses generally had pokey rooms but these don't look pokey.

Its not a lovely period property but my experience of Edwardian house tells me it could be very solid and so the actual bricks and mortar if no damp could be good.

You'd need new kitchen and bathroom plus decorate throughout but it could all be done over time. I've seen some very unlovely houses done up to look great but it would be expensive.

I agree with a lot of it looking 1970's. I suspect it was derelict, in need of complete renovation and that's what they did in the 70's. Probably wouldn't get planning permission to do it nowadays.

Looks like they've added a 2 storey box extension to fill in the middle (I think it was an L-shaped house before). Plus looks like they've knocked out the brick pillars/stone lintels that would've been above the tall, probably sliding sash windows and put in wider mid-century style ones. Quite probably lost a bay window or 2, too.

Look at the brick work. A bay gone?

That brick arch entrance is quite something. That's not original is it? It looks like my mum's 1973 semi. Apart from the fireplaces you would have no idea it was originally Victorian. The problem with period houses is that unless Grade 1 listed you can do what you like with thrm inside.

I like the garden. It has potential.

And this one has evidence of bricking up a bay.

That is really overpriced for such an ugly house in that area.

Whenever it's from it's bloody ugly. Absolutely not for nearly half a million.

It is an extension, yes. That whole section is new. Look at its stupid roof shape.

Looks like it would've been an L shaped house originally I think.

The kitchen is awful. I'm not sure what modernisation is supposed to be being admired.

It looks like a post WW2 house, the ceiling height and window proportions are a giveaway. I think the description is inaccurate.

The only thing this modernisation has going for it is that it has been so thoroughly done that it doesn’t even feel like a period house. There are a few around here where the original windows have been replaced with modern picture windows, but the brickwork is a really poor match so the outlines of the older, much more nicely shaped, windows are glaringly obvious. It’s impossible to look at them and wonder why the hell anyone went to the bother. There may be something to be said for completely obliterating all traces of the period - it’s not so in your face.