The stroll we took yesterday was through a development which is still being built - that’s how new the houses are. They broke ground on the site about three years ago - that’s how I can estimate the age of the houses.
From the fact that so many new houses in a very small area have identical faux-bricking-up I have no doubt whatsoever that the houses were built that way. Out of curiosity I went looking at other new developments in the area (there are a lot!) and found a similar development with the same faux-bricking-up using google streetview* - in fact (full disclosure) the images I posted are of the second location, simply because I don’t particularly want to advertise where I live on the internet. But as the images serve to illustrate what I was describing, the specific location of the houses isn’t really relevant. If anything, the density of faux-bricking-up in our local site is greater.
As an aside, I believe both developments may have involved the same building company. It’s possible that they specialise in this “feature”. I don’t know who built the housing in the other two links I found.
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because these developments are so new, there’s a limit to what you can achieve using streetview.
O.K., thank you, Treppenwitz. You’ll notice that the third URL you link to (a Twitter one) is from 2014. So this style of fake bricked-up windows is at least six years old. When I looked at the pictures you linked to, I could tell that the general style of the buildings (not that of the windows but of the buildings overall) seemed to be characteristic of houses built in the past sixty years. That’s all I meant by calling them post-1960. You said that it was a new housing development, but that’s vague to me. Maybe it just gives away how old I am, but I’d like to think that I can guess more or less when a house was built, although “more or less” probably means something different to me than it does to you. To me, that style is relatively new, but relatively new to me means that it’s clearly post-World-War-II. Anyway, how common is it in the U.K. to have have these false bricked-in windows in a building when it’s first built?
Never seen it before yesterday. It’s something I’ll look out for from now on, but my travel is going to be limited for the foreseeable future (Is your journey really necessary? Sure, Officer, I’m trying to solve the great faux-bricked-up window mystery) and, as I mentioned upthread, it’s hard to investigate new housing developments with Google Streetview, simply because the are new.
(And I think this phenomenon has to be new, otherwise (a) we’d have noticed it earlier; and (b) there would be more about it on the internet).
There was a conscious effort on behalf of the architect to design buildings that looked like they had been there for decades (cant pick a date because they don’t strictly follow a historic style). We know it works because people here are asking exactly how old these are.
You can get that effect with the overall design, by choosing historical features like the unrendered brick work, string-courses and so on, but you also respond sub-consciously to what seems to be evidence of change and age. A faux bricked-up window does look a bit odd, but it immediately adds a veneer of age that you don’t get just from using rustic concrete ‘stone’ or adding fake battlements.
Peter Jackson did it a lot in Lord of the Rings. You fake a sense of time depth by showing something decayed and half covered by an old tree.
There are several older (1920?) buildings in downtown Little Rock with bricked in windows. There are businesses there now, and I have always thought that the use of the building changed, and businesses wanted the windows bricked in for security. Some of the buildings are warehouses, and you don’t want windows taking up wall space in a warehouse.
I’ve had to partially brick-in windows twice during renovations, where the design called for installing ordinarily concealed things. In fact just this week we had to sacrifice half a window to a kitchen cabinet + countertop, but fortunately the redesign opened up enough space for compensating window exposure.
In the US it’s common to see old factories with bricked up windows. I can’t remember where, but I once heard that in the 1950s there was a theory that if workers could see outside they would get distracted and work less efficiently, therefore windows should be covered or eliminated. I believe a lot of existing factories got their windows bricked up during this era.
In my home town there’s an old textile mill that dated from the turn of the 20th century. The windows there were bricked up since long before I was born. The mill closed in the 1990s and sat unused for decades. Then a developer finally bought it and converted it to retail space. As part of the renovation the windows were put back. I imagine a big windowless building would have made a pretty unpleasant shopping experience. Actually I imagine it made for a pretty soul crushing work environment as well.
The original purpose of windows was to let light into a building; the view outside was of secondary consideration.
The advent of electric lighting changed this, and factory owners could now indeed get rid of their windows to keep workers from being distracted (and figuring out what time of day it was).
Nor are they unknown on new buildings in the UK. They are among the vaguely ‘Georgian’ features sometimes included on otherwise unremarkable brick buildings in desperate attempts to imply classiness. Used properly, they needn’t look too bad and they tend to be more convincing than most other faux-classical details.
That, APB, is one hell of a reference - thank you. It goes quite a ways to addressing the issue. I think it leaves hanging the question of* how come these ghastly affectations have found their way into UK mass house construction in the 2010s?* But that could be something as simple and as stupid as the whim of an architect, nicking an old idea they read about in architect school. Who knows?
(a) Well said!
(b) Notes on English English: Shit is not the same as Shite. This is the correct use of the word Shite.
I was being - ah - playful at that point. But I’ll have a hack at a serious answer (because it is the sort of thing that interests me). I disagree with most of the previous thread, but it’s from 2004 and usage changes. I thinkFilbert was using the word in the sense that I would - it’s more nuanced than “shit” and implies a sense of disapproval or disdain. If you say “That was a really shit thing to do” to someone, it might mean no more than they were being really thoughtless and selfish; “That was a really shite thing to do” means the same, but additionally hints that you also thought it was somewhat contemptible. Maybe contemptible is too strong a word, but you see where I’m going. (IMHO, YMMV, etc etc).
It’s The Faux Bricked-Up Window In Warehouse Style!
Upthread I promised I would be looking out for more examples of this. At the risk of appearing dangerously obsessed by a really rather trivial matter (ain’t they the worst?), I offer you these monstrosities.
Once again, this is google streetview, so you are able to have a nose around (and figure out how light gets in, which is what I was doing). These examples, shamelessly rocking a converted warehouse vibe, are in Lingfield, Surrey, where we found ourselves today. Spotted by Mrs Trep, who seems to be developing an eye for this sort of thing. The houses appear to date from 2003, so these are much older examples than the ones that originally annoyed me.
Not to me. To me, bricked up windows speak of abandonment – either the building as a whole, or parts of it, are no longer in use, except possibly for warehousing.
