Tuesday 12 December 2006

4 Clees Lane




Introducing our new home, March 2006

Clees Lane was formerly nos. 3 and 4 Clees Lane (even earlier it was, we think, nos. 1 and 2, but we won't go into that for the moment. ) It is made up of the first two cottages in a field terrace - i.e. the terrace runs at right angles to the Lane, more or less on a contour line, looking E / SE across the Tawe valley. It is not the usual urban terrace, in that the houses are all at least slightly different - e.g. no. 3 was originally double-fronted, no. 4 single-fronted - and it seems very likely that the terrace as we see it was not built as a unit. 3, 4 and 5 are certainly a single construction, although no. 5 is deeper than 3 and 4. No 6 is separate from no 5, though you could get no more than a knife between them, and so on down the line. There are now 5 cottages beyond ours, but see below......
The family from whom we purchased had certainly occupied no. 4 since before WWII. They bought no. 3 in 1973, and got an improvement grant to combine the two, but most of the work done seems to have been on 3, which contains a working kitchen and bathroom, and is generally in better order than the original no. 4 . Accommodation comprises: (ground floor ) two receptions and good-sized kitchen plus a single storey outshoot which was an earlier kitchen and bathroom but will now have to be demolished/replaced; (upstairs) one big bedroom and two others which could both be 'doubles' at a pinch, plus large bathroom (I have thoughts of developing this as a bathroom plus a shower-room in due course.)

Now for the interesting bit......

The area is post-industrial. In the C19th, Ystalyfera was the tin-plate capital of the world, and there was a coal mine just across the Lane. (After we had bought Clees Lane, we realised that all the conventional homes we have owned have been in mining/post-mining villages - Beighton, Killamarsh, Hook and now Pant-teg. If you have a certificate and white coat, please feel free to comment.....)

The area suffered from incidents of subsidence and movement in the 1960s and 1980s, and the terrace from 5 onwards has been unoccupied since about 1980.
Our estimate is that no. 5 may be rescuable, no. 6 might just be a 'restore from shell' job, but beyond that it is almost certainly demolition city.
Our house has certainly suffered in the past, but seems not to lie on the main fault-line, and although it needs work, we have every confidence in it as a prospective home. Successive local authorities have done a lot of work on drainage and run-off, and the area now seems stable and relatively well-heeled.

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