The house on the Huxley Estate where my mother lived as a child in Edmonton (now Enfield) in the early 1900s must have been reasonably typical of other houses on that and similar estates, although of course there would have been some differences. Quite apart from personal choices of furnishing, the houses improved in facilities and finish as each new road was built.
My mother left detailed written descriptions of her childhood home: 116 Lopen Road, Edmonton. The plans shown below are based on what she wrote and a sketch by my cousin, John Cole. His sketch was based on a current estate agent's description of a house in Lopen Road and his own recollections of a similar house on the Huxley Estate in the 1940s which belonged to a rather elderly resident who had probably kept things much as they were over the years. That house was 120 Warwick Road. It was John who wrote his recollections of the home front in Edmonton during the Second World War.
A road on the Huxley Estate showing how the houses were built in pairs, such that adjacent entrances were shared with neighbours on one side and adjacent chimney stacks with neighbours on the other side.
John has pointed out that the houses, although terraced, were built in pairs, so, for example, 116 and 118 had adjacent front doors, and 116 shared its chimney stack with 114, and so on. So the floor plans of alternate houses would be the mirror image of one another.
Information on the individual rooms will follow in due course as I transcribe more of my mother's recollections.
 Floor plan of the downstairs rooms of 116 Lopen Road, Edmonton (now Enfield) in the early 1900s. In the slightly later houses, the entrance to the coal hole was from the kitchen.  Floor plan of the upstairs rooms of 116 Lopen Road, Edmonton (now Enfield) in the early 1900s. |
If you were looking over 116 Lopen Road in the early 1900s, you might see the following areas in the following order:
Turning back into the house, you would climb the stairs to the upper floor where you might see the rooms in the following order:
Gas was laid on for lighting; heating was by open coal fires; hot water was by the coal-fired copper in the scullery or by a kettle heated on the range; the outside lavatory flushed.
As an example of the changes which distinguished the various houses over time, John has pointed out that the house at 120 Warwick Road, on which he based his recollections, had a large earthenware bath in the scullery, which, when not in use, had a cover over it which doubled as a worktop. He suggests that the bath may have been discontinued in the later-built houses as it was large, had a rough internal finish and would have taken a lot of water - which had of course to be heated by the copper or a kettle.
This page shows layouts and room plans of 116 Lopen Road, Edmonton (now Enfield) in the early 1900s. Other houses on the Huxley Estate would have had identical basic designs although they would have differed slightly as minor improvements were made over time.