Victorian semi-detached house extensions

The semi-detached Victorian house any Victorian house plans conform to a general layout for their given type of property. The higher end Victorian houses incorporated features such as bay windows, ironwork terraces, stonework details for headers and cills, brickwork detailing for banding or quoining. Fortunately, most homeowners have respected these features and most are still retained.

During the 19th century, a father and son architectural partnership, John Shaw, Sr. and John Shaw, Jr., drew up some of the very first designs for semi-detached housing in London. Examples of their work can be seen in Chalk Farm, North London.

In the British housing boom of the 1920s and 1930s semi-detached houses sprang up in suburbs throughout the country, and were popular with middle class home owners who preferred them to terrace houses.

The design of many of these houses, highly characteristic of the era, was heavily influenced by the Art Deco movement, taking influence from mock Tudor, chalet styles and even ship design.

In the immediate post-war years many council houses also followed the 'semi' format, giving many Britons a first experience of private garden space.

Many of the semi-detached Victorian dwellings shared similar internal floor layouts as the terraced dwellings but slightly larger.  Therefore, they too suffered in planning approval rates for the infill side extensions under the new PD regime for when a site is within a conservation area.

Two storey rear extensions are normally acceptable provided they maintain light angles to the adjoining neighbours windows.