This Side of the Pond

It surprises me that a peculiarly British phenomenon has wedged its way into the news cycle here in the Midwest, as I personally would not have considered it news. I speak of an article that recently appeared even in Wyoming’s newspapers about the narrowest home in England going up for sale.

This London abode might be less than six feet across, but it’s hardly far from the norm. With your spacious homes and sprawling yards, you Wyomingites clearly don’t realize how good you have it. In Britain, you’ll find all manner of tiny living spaces – to be honest, in the UK there are very few cats in danger of being swung.

Some of our smaller abodes came about for specific reasons, such as the almshouses. I’ve lived in one of these myself and can report that, while small, they have a unique charm all of their own.

An almshouse is a charitable home for the poor, elderly or those in certain forms of employment. The word “alms” comes from Old English and refers to the act of charitable giving.

British almshouses have been around since the tenth century and were originally extensions of the church system. They often appear in rows and some of the earliest are actually still in use – the oldest of these is the Hospital of St. Cross, which dates all the way back to 1132 and still provides accommodation for up to 25 elderly men.

The particular almshouse I lived in for a while was one of the many that have been converted to regular housing. It was beautiful, but it was both old and built as free housing, so you could never describe it as large.

Sometimes there’s just no other way to fit enough people into the space available. The Greater London Urban Area, for example, had a population just under 10 million when the 2011 census was taken, and all of those people are crammed into just 671 square miles.

That’s a lot more people living in a small space than there were even a hundred years ago, so we all have to make do with much less space. For example, the apartment I was living in before my move to Wyoming used to be a single room inside a Georgian-era mansion.

Back when it was built, some time in the eighteenth century, it would have had drawing rooms and reception rooms and multiple bedrooms, and a single family would have swanned around all that space and probably complained it was cramped. By the time I got to London, it had been separated into no fewer than 19 individual apartments.

My husband still refers to that apartment as “the cupboard,” though I thought it was pretty spacious at the time. It had a living area big enough for a couch and television, a tiny kitchen and a loft area that could fit a double mattress – the bathroom I shared with the other occupants on my floor.

It was shocking to the husband, who had never imagined anyone to feel comfortable in a home so small that you guys wouldn’t even use it as a space to park an average-sized SUV. It’s all about what you’re used to, I suppose.

People have come up with all sorts of ways to get around this lack of space, from houseboats on the canals and rivers to squeezing extra apartments into the eaves of an existing building. Always fancied living in your own attic? London has you covered.

Sometimes, our homes are tiny because there just wasn’t room for anything else. The Slim House in St. John’s Hill, London fills in the gap between an old, Victorian home and the building next to it.

Just 7.5 feet across at its widest point, somehow they still squeezed 1000 square feet of living space inside. Of course, that’s split between three floors, so you won’t want to invest in too many area rugs.

The home that has been appearing in the news on this side of the ocean is billed as “England’s thinnest house” and is even smaller still. It used to be a hat store with storage space above for merchandise and is today squeezed in between a doctor’s surgery and a salon.

Apparently you don’t need much width to sell hats, because in some places it’s just 5 feet 5 inches across. This skinny abode is five stories high, with a trapdoor to reach the very highest level.

But don’t be fooled into thinking you can invest in one of these quirky small London homes to net yourself a bargain. Living in England’s capital is still an expensive affair, and even its thinnest home will set you back over $1 million.

Sometimes, our houses are small because we refuse to knock down any of our buildings, no matter how old or rickety. In my own county, there’s a teeny tiny building that was constructed to levy tolls on the users of Dorset roads. They were in a terrible state, so the turnpike trusts were tasked with improving them and did so by making people pay to go through a series of strategically placed gates.

A couple of centuries ago, someone would sit in one of these toll houses waiting to pounce on the purses of passers-by. This, as you might imagine, did not require the building to be a mansion.

Perhaps they refused to demolish it because of the wonderful views, or maybe they just didn’t get round to it. Either way, its four little rooms today form the basis of a one-bedroom home.

And then there’s the smallest house in Britain, 72 inches wide and imaginatively named The Smallest House. You’ll find it in Wales, but you’ll have to look closely, as it’s also only ten feet high and deep.

Built in the 16th century, it’s just about big enough for rudimentary cooking facilities and a bedroom. It was, once again, built to fill in the gap between two cottages and was last occupied by a fisherman in 1900, after which it was declared unfit for habitation.

Its final occupant is said to have been 6 foot 3 inches tall, which meant the ceilings were too low for him to stand up straight. Today, it’s a tourist attraction that will cost you just $1.30 to visit.

Because humans will be humans, not everyone enjoys the experience. It has plenty of good reviews on internet travel sites, but also a lot of complaints.

My favorite of these was written by a lady who traveled quite a way to see it, only to discover that there wasn’t much to see. You’d think she could have figured that one out before she arrived.