Betjeman's Ballyholme?
What I see in this image is a house built in the early 1920s with a car garage that was made to house perhaps an Austin Seven (via Fred_Bear) or something of that size. There are many of these houses in Bangor and Belfast, but what interests me is a number of things.
Firstly, it's clear that with the increase in the size of cars since the 1960s on, many of these garages became sheds, as it wasn't always possible to safely drive the cars past the house to get to the garage and indeed, to fit the car inside the garage itself.
Secondly, no expense seems to have been spared. Individual panes of glass, or as in my second example, lead lined lattice patterned glass, is in place. The doors are on what seem to be brass runners along a track that carries the whole door in sections further into the garage. The walls and roof are made of the same materials as the house and the garage forms part of the overall structure of the house too.
Thirdly, depending on how long the current occupier has owned the house, the contents could be time capsules. One abiding memory for me growing up, was time spent in a neighbour's garage messing around, as kids do. It was a meeting spot in wet weather, with the door open, a set of goal posts and in summer, with both doors open, a ventilated stadium for countless games of Subbuteo.
The McKeevers were a large family and the youngest kids were our age. There were books, old textbooks, kids annuals from the '50s and loads more weatherbeaten and rusty items sitting on shelves and hanging from joists - enough to stock more than a few displays in a local museum today. Anyway, I digress...
The Other Garage - (if you get Say Titanic Again - click along to the second image)
I might make a bit of a project of this, over the summer.
Comments
Sign in or get an account to comment.