Specialty Gardening: By special request., 1 by wallaby1

wallaby1 wrote:
pmulcaire, there is a wide variety of homes here. Many of the older properties on city edges are large Victorian or Georgian style houses on the main routes, once owned by the Doctors, Lawyers etc. Then there are the poorer type housing of workers, often further out of a city and many are terraced, the slightly better off ones being semi-detached. That was times past, and many of these still exist. Probably post war many housing estates sprung up, smaller outlying villages close to a city have become part of the suburban areas with building joining them together. Again, there are detached and semi-detached houses and in this country they are mostly two story, with some 'bungalows' which are single story, what would just be called a house in Australia, which is more the norm there. As with all places, space and prices play a part, but in a colder country it makes sense to have the warmth go from the lower level to the upper level. New large houses being built now have very small gardens, in times past they had large ones where people usually grew vegetables, kept chickens etc.

The house I live in is in a country area, and is part of an old Estate which once was owned by one of the 'classes', the rich people who made their fortunes often through Industrialisation, or further back through foreign investments, such as the sugar industry, plantation owners etc. I don't know the history of this particular one, but the main house was burnt down in the late 1970's when Vietnamese refugees were being housed there. As with many country houses, it had been taken over during war times by the Airforce, they were often used as hospitals and for recouperation of, often, the people in charge such as Officers who were again from the 'classes'. The rooves you can see over my hedge are houses which were built by the Air Force in the 1950's to house personnel and sold off in the early nineties. The house I live in is very old and was probably used to house perhaps the Estate manager, and perhaps head gardener but that is speculation. It was 2 properties as semi-detached well over 100 years ago, but at some time it was converted into 3 properties (over 100 years ago), it may have been done when the top floor was built on as it looks to be an addition, it would have once had lofts in the roof space where people used to keep their grains safe. This particular property was sold by the RAF to the same family in the early 1960's, then it had one acre of land and it was divided into 3 equal areas. It would have been used as Officers housing. The other end neighbour has the old washouses with 3 separate ones for each occupant. In history further back the house may have been used for visiting dignities, relatives, friends etc., this I think because of the name it has been given. It definitely is a good quality build, unlike Estate farm cottages which are built of poor quality brick and are generally quite low by comparison.

Sorry, no tips on aviaries.