C O N T E X T 1 3 9 : M A Y 2 0 1 5 31 JUSTINE PAGE Going underground Basement excavations can have significant impact, particularly on listed terraced houses, as the recent experience of the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea shows. Excavating basements under buildings in London has become a common form of domestic extension in recent years, with the press dubbing the results ‘iceberg homes’ as some dwellings have more floorspace underground than above. In November 2014 the IHBC in association with the Chartered Institute for Archaeologists (CIfA) ran a seminar focusing on this form of development and how it affects heritage assets. Neil Burton, director of the Architectural History Practice, set the scene at the seminar by giving the history of basements in English domestic architecture. In medieval times half of all houses built had vaulted cellars but these were specifically for storage.The Fire of London brought about the setting of standards for house building and Renway specified a standard depth of 6½ feet for cellars in 1669. By the end of the 17th century the term basement had become the norm. We are all familiar with the Georgian and Victorian terraced house with its sunken front area, coal cellars, kitchen and servants’ quarters at basement level. The very rich kept many servants and therefore needed bigger basements. In London’s Mayfair, for example, the Grosvenor Street houses had enormous basements that ran from the front vaults to the back of the plot. This was a common arrangement. From the 1820s to the 1830s the half basement became common. However, primitive drainage meant that cess pools were located under the houses. With the cholera epidemic of the 1840s it was finally recognised that these basements were unhealthy places, but they nevertheless remained occupied until the early 20th century. Today many families have inverted the status of these areas by making the basement of a terraced house the heart of the home due to their access to the garden and kitchen. In some wealthy London houses the basement still functions as servants’ quarters, albeit with less strict separation from the family than in the past. The Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea has many desirable places to live, such as Notting Hill and Knightsbridge as well as the borough’s namesakes.We have some of the highest property values in the world, the second-highest population density in England and Wales, and one of the highest concentrations of heritage assets in the country. Unsurprisingly this sometimes leads to conflicts of interest.The lifestyles of the superrich may mean that they want to have a base in London with all the private facilities that are fashionable in their circles (swimming pools, gyms, cinema rooms and stacked car parking are a few common requirements) or simply to maximise the value of their assets. The trend for new basements has been on the rise over the last 15 or so years. In 2001 we received 46 applications, the number peaked at 450 in 2013, and it A three-storey basement in the garden of a listed building
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