Nifty
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Post by Nifty on Dec 7, 2023 10:01:47 GMT 1
I wonder how many on this forum have of pensionable age moved away from the stomping grounds of their childhood, spent a long time away from them and revisited them, either physically or via such resources was Google Earth?
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Aardvark
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Post by Aardvark on Dec 7, 2023 12:47:38 GMT 1
I have. 1) Childhood house in a neighbourhood on the edge of unfashionable East LA is now three dwellings and looking quite good.
2) The next one I remember was in a much better area but has since been demolished to establish an urban motorway.
3) The one where I spent my teen years is now converted into a financial services office.
4) The next place has also been extended and at the last look on Zoopla is valued at £900,000. The one I had considered a few doors along for myself last sold for just over a million. I was offered a mortgage at £40 a month but turned it down.
5) The next place was a bungalow on a large plot and has been demolished and construction of what looks like a vast futuristic "grand design" has been ongoing for a couple of years now. Should be impressive if/when it ever gets finished. 6) My own first home, a bungalow, has been extended but thankfully they didn't lose my beloved garage/workshop to do so.
7) Happily my next place was/is Grade II listed and therefore safe from any serious external tampering.
8) My last place in UK, yards from water's edge in Poole Harbour has been extended into the loft with a large Velux to maximise the view.
9) My first place in France hasn't changed in any noticeable way except for a new Velux in the roof. Garden has reverted to wilderness.
After exploring Google Street View a few times over the years I always come away wondering why I do it. To see places I have lived and enjoyed and put so much effort into often leaves me sad to see them either extended purely to increase their resale value or demolished. I don't think it is wise to look back. Cars and boats I have put heart, soul, and most of my resources into have gone downhill very quickly after being sold to some uncaring person.
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Post by houpla on Dec 7, 2023 13:59:48 GMT 1
I looked at my parents former house just once after it was sold. It was quite cheering to see the new owner doing things that we'd been trying to persuade my Dad to do for decades Not so happy to see our former house and especially the garden deteriorate over the years since we came here. Seeing what the tenants did to my beautiful garden was truly heartbreaking. We finally sold it last year. Didn't even have to go back to sign papers, fortunately, and have no desire to see what may be happening to it now.
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Post by ForumUser2 on Dec 7, 2023 18:05:38 GMT 1
The house my parents lived in when I was born still exists in Bangor, Co Down and looks very neat and tidy.
The next house was on Woodvale Avenue in the Shankill which has long been demolished as part of a slum clearance plan.
Then we move to East Belfast where, again, the back-to-back no longer exists and has been replaced by quite smart council housing.
On trips to Belfast in recent years I've revisited the latter 2 areas and remain totally thankful not to live there.
From Belfast we move to Bancroft Street in the Stretford area of Manchester - again a victim of slum clearance.
Thence to Huddersfield where life went upmarket to a 2-bed semi with one open fire and no CH. Looking at Google Street view I see it's been extended upwards to create, I presume, a bedroom in the loft.
Left there as a 17-year-old to go to University and never went back. It's Huddersfield; why would you?
Whole series of military accom for over 30 years, some still exists,some sold off. Owned several properties in UK but all rented out and now sold off.
Then Dept 71, now Lincolnshire.
Of all those places I'd place our favourite properties as
1. The house in 71
2. Our final house in Germany which was a 5 bed bungalow with enclosed grounds (for which we must thank NATO and the UK taxpayer)
3. Anywhere else I've lived except Belfast, Manchester and Huddersfield!
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Veem
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Post by Veem on Dec 7, 2023 19:02:03 GMT 1
I just googled the house my family lived in from when I was about 3 until I was 6. It looked bigger than I remembered it although the coal house and scullery at the back had disappeared. My father had designed a house which was being built on the edge of the same town and we moved into that just before my 7th birthday. Our family lived there for the next 52 years until my father died when the house was sold to a developer who promptly knocked it down and built 8 luxury detached houses on the paddock.
It was a fitting end for a house which we all loved and was only ever lived in by our family without anyone moving in later and changing anything about it. Lovely memories all still intact.
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Post by tim17 on Dec 8, 2023 8:25:59 GMT 1
I've recently moved back to the city I was brought up in and am able to visit all of the houses I lived in apart from my grandparents council house which was torn down years ago, none of the houses have changed much apart from the odd extension.
Our first house in France was sold to a Brit couple who instantly became clients so we visited the place regularly until we left in July, in the 12 years that they've owned it it's not been touched and from the outside it looks exactly the same as the day we handed over the keys.
I'm not really sentimental so have no attachment to anywhere I've called home, what does interest me though especially in the older houses I've lived in is what it would have looked like internally when it was first used.
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Aardvark
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Living in soggy 22 and still wondering what's going on.
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Post by Aardvark on Dec 8, 2023 11:24:01 GMT 1
"I'm not really sentimental so have no attachment to anywhere I've called home, what does interest me though especially in the older houses I've lived in is what it would have looked like internally when it was first used."
That very interest was foremost in my mind when I bought the Grade II listed house in Kent. Externally it remains the same as it appeared when the architectural preservation listing was done in the 20th century but its Georgian facade hides the fact that when it was first built in c.1400 it was a Medieval hall house that had an open fire in the middle of the room where animals were kept at one end and the quite well off merchant owner slept at the other end. Going to bed at night I often pondered the lives of all the people who had lived there over the centuries.
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Nifty
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Post by Nifty on Dec 8, 2023 12:26:31 GMT 1
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Post by houpla on Dec 8, 2023 12:50:54 GMT 1
"I'm not really sentimental so have no attachment to anywhere I've called home, what does interest me though especially in the older houses I've lived in is what it would have looked like internally when it was first used."That very interest was foremost in my mind when I bought the Grade II listed house in Kent. Externally it remains the same as it appeared when the architectural preservation listing was done in the 20th century but its Georgian facade hides the fact that when it was first built in c.1400 it was a Medieval hall house that had an open fire in the middle of the room where animals were kept at one end and the quite well off merchant owner slept at the other end. Going to bed at night I often pondered the lives of all the people who had lived there over the centuries. Sounds a bit similar to our barn here in France. 90% of the space was just that..a cow barn. Apparently the other 10% (which is now our living room) which was made of torchis, housed 9 people There was a cheminée, an old iron poele and a tiny, stone sink. How the other half lived, hein?
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Aardvark
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Living in soggy 22 and still wondering what's going on.
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Post by Aardvark on Dec 8, 2023 13:43:16 GMT 1
I have an intense passion for older "domestic" buildings and if given a choice between one of those or a modern crackerbox with no discernable character or history they win every time. Trouble is in UK they are now priced way beyond the reach of mere mortals. This sort of property being so much cheaper (needing renovation) in France was the main reason I was tempted off my very comfortable boat into a life of draughts, leaks, and rodents.
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Post by houpla on Dec 8, 2023 16:51:21 GMT 1
Renovation here is a lot more expensive now, isn't it? Not to mention the swingeing taxe d'aménagement currently imposed. I'm glad we did it when we did because we certainly won't ever do it again!
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Post by monsieur3seas on Dec 9, 2023 9:46:46 GMT 1
My daughter sent me a picture/advert for the house we lived in....except it was not my house. A brand new house had been built to buy for 3.5 million or 10% deposit and mortgage repayments of £10k a month (before recent inflation upped interest rates.
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suein56
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Southern Morbihan 56 Brittany
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Post by suein56 on Dec 9, 2023 12:47:57 GMT 1
About 20 or so years ago when my cousin retired he decided to go on a 'memory' journey travelling through parts of England and Scotland where my family and I had lived when I was young. This was because his mum, my aunt, was a widowed nurse and so my cousin came to spend each long summer holiday with us wherever we were living at the time. After he returned he said he was disappointed that each place he had visited had completely changed .. in his opinion not for the better .. and advised me not to revisit anywhere I had lived. I sneakily looked online at one or two and, it was true, everywhere had changed. For example at one point we had the most amazing apartment - the entire ground floor of a huge 'Villa' built at the end of Queen Victoria's reign. The whole 3 storey building had since been demolished and an uninspiring oblong block of flats had been built in the 1960's, the earlier garden being given over to parking. A grand Hotel, close by, had also been demolished and a huge estate of small bungalows had been built. I know people need houses but all those 60's properties were so mean-looking it seemed a shame that smthg more inspiring couldn't have been built.
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Post by ForumUser2 on Dec 9, 2023 18:34:36 GMT 1
Sue,
On the other hand you can revisit a place and find it much improved. As examples of this I'd put forward: most of the Shankill area of Belfast where crumbling terraces have been replaced by modern housing (even if the tenants don't necessarily understand that a front garden is not a depository for broken washing machines etc); the Bogside area of Derry/Londonderry which has been changed as above, though not, oddly the adjacent Creggan estate which is still a dump. And also the Trafford bar area of Manchester which has been immensely improved by the slum clearances, the Gorbals, much of Lancashire's and West Yorkshire's terraced houses, the gentrification of Saltaire, the transformation of the old wharves on the Thames into smart apartments. Etc.
It's not all bad!
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suein56
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Southern Morbihan 56 Brittany
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Post by suein56 on Dec 9, 2023 23:11:28 GMT 1
I'll give you that .. but there is still a lot that was built, and continues to be built, to replace solid back to back houses that could have been renovated, that is shoddy.
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