(Re)development

I grew up in the suburbs of London. For the first six months of my life, we lived in a flat in Twickenham but then my parents bought a house in New Malden. In the ensuing fifty years, I don't think London itself has grown that much but its population certainly has. In those days, new houses were built with generous gardens and the roads were free-flowing and - in my memory, at least - there was always somewhere to park.

Our house was a three-bedroomed semi-detached and most of my friends' houses followed the same formula. The only differentiator was whether the stairs were on the left or the right when you walked in. It was one of my ambitions not to live in a predictable semi-detached house when I got older.

Since leaving university, I've lived in a maisonette, which was upside-down with the bedrooms downstairs, a cottage, a farmhouse, a converted barn and then, when I bought a house... oh. Semi-detached. (And since then, the cottage I was in last year and the one I'm in now.)

I still own the house and it's possible that at some point that it will be my home again but I do spend a lot of time thinking about other places I'd like to live. And going around, amongst others,  London, Manchester, Edinburgh and, today, Lancaster, I see lots of buildings, apparently abandoned that are ripe for conversion. The one I saw today was the old Mitchell's Brewery.

I don't know why so many of these buildings haven't been renovated while people debate the use of 'greenfield' sites. God knows I'd love the opportunity to take one of these buildings and turn it in to a home, as far as possible away from the old semi-detached formula.