Earls Court Living
Basement
In most Georgian terraces, the road at the front was built up to be near the level of the ground floor of the house. There was a basement which was at the previous genuine ground level, and which opened onto the garden at ground level at the rear. At the front, there was an open area to allow light into the basement windows, with railings to prevent people falling into the area.
Later, it was realised that an annexe could be built at the back of the house at garden level to provide additional room space without blocking the light from the main “ground” floor rooms.
The basement contained the kitchen, scullery and pantries, and ample storage for beer and wine was provided, usually in the centre of the house between the back and front basement rooms. The kitchen premises were serviced through a doorway into the front area, which was stone paved and contained stone steps leading up to the small front garden or to a gate in the iron railings along the pavement. The basement doorway was normally situated under the stone bridge which spanned the area at street level to give access to the front door, and the service and social entrances to the front of the house were thus quite separate. Circular iron plates let into the pavement allowed the delivery of coal to be made directly from the merchant’s cart into brick-lined vaults which communicated with the area. The low pressure water supply commonly served a lead storage tank at kitchen level. The placing of the kitchen at this level kept the principal rooms well away from any rising damp in the brick walls. Floors were usually of stone in the basement passages, sculleries and stores, but frequently of suspended timber construction in the kitchens despite the vulnerability of wood to fungus attack - a danger which was also pronounced in the match-boarded dados covering the lower parts of much of the basement walls.
