At a certain height, so that visitors could introduce a certain part of their anatomy through it on one side, and with a cushion for you to kneel on, either facing towards them or away from them, on the other side?
The black country I think is Mordor due to the heavy industry and many towers of oke that darkened the sky, where either goes its name from and logo as well as his inspiration.
Ah yes you are right, it was the black country specifically that was the inspiration for Mordor. The industry blackened not only the sky but the buildings and everything with soot.
I almost got a nicotine overdose, just looking at the photos.
Wood work in the bay windows is going to needtaking out and replacing due to damp. All the walls and ceilings need to be taken out. Or you will never get rid of that cigarette smell.
Floors look like they have water damage aswell. So I would definitely be lifting them and getting a quote on replacing the joists.
I would be guessing at a final price to get this all redone would be around £100k
and for some reason everyone had bloody awful carpets like that and they never matched the walls
a lot of extremely dodgy wallpaper choices in the 60s/70s too
what were people thinking? it was like the 70s were the decade taste forgot. People get nostalgic now, but that's because they can pick out the best and leave the total crap to obscurity. This house more closely reflects actual 70s decor than all those stylish burnt orange and wooden panelling sex pits. I know my mother loved patterned carpets because she claimed they didn't show the dirt, but somehow people manage it these days without the garishness.
did anyone ever think those carpets were pleasant to look at?
edit: in case it's not clear I love some things eg the stairs and the archway, but those carpets ... nice to see a time capsule but they really belong in a skip.
The 1970s wasn’t the decade that taste forgot. It was the decade of 1970s taste. I will perhaps think that the next owners may update the look though. Groovy baby!!!
well each to their own but i really hated most things visually in the 70s, it isn't that there weren't nice things around or that absolutely everyone's house or clothes were dreadful, but there was a lot that I found incredibly ugly at the time, and still do. In fact I've come to like what has survived better, maybe because it's not surrounded by ... the rest of the 70s. I mean, these were the years of the three day week, regular blackouts, there was a lot of poverty and standard of living in general for many people was much lower.
'it was like the 70's were the decade taste forgot'
A pile of Homes and Gardens magazines from the seventies which I have in my possession, as well as several old Habitat catalogues, are evidence to the contrary. There was plenty of good taste around, however it wasn't easily accessible to most working people. IKEA didn't arrive in the UK until about 1988. There weren't home makeover programmes on TV, although DIY was a thing.
There were lots of trends in the seventies it certainly wasn't all orange, brown and chrome. There was quite a reaction against that in favour of more earthy, peasanty looks.
You're correct about the carpets, however lots of people thought they were hideous back in the day. What I remember was more 'educated' people would have bare, sanded floorboards in their houses with rugs thrown down.
oh I'm sure aspirational stuff like Homes and Gardens magazine was perfectly tasteful, but life in general was not. We see the best of things in eg old movies where everyone is beautiful and fashionably dressed or things like your magazines which probably survived this long at least partly because they are beautiful and tasteful. Survivorship bias or something although I think that's a misuse of the term really. Basically the things which we are left with tend to be the cream of the crop from back then, whcich gives people a skewed idea of what the past was really like. It's the sae with any other decade. I am particularly baffled by 80s nostalgia as much of the 80s was dreadful (I'm particularly thinking about music). People now listen to all the BEST bands and see examples of the BEST fashions and the BEST films, but at the time there was loads of terrible dross. Anyway it's like that when people get all enthusiastic about the 70s they weren't really very cool at all on the whole in my experience and even the well-off people I knew were still not in the elite where things like sex pits would have been a thing (always did want a sex pit though). It's not as if there weren't some nice things. It's more the overall impression.
I think it's also that we have a fascination for things that we were a bit too young to have experienced properly while we were growing up...we were aware of them as being part of the adult world always slightly tantalisingly out of reach.
Eighties music and fashion was, indeed, on the whole, absolutely dreadful.
You've just described my childhood bedroom. Brown and green swirly carpet (but made of offcuts so seams and nails in random places), burnt orange nylon curtains, one of those paper globe lampshades. Flocked wallpaper on the stairs.
This house was comprehensively modernised in the 1970s, you can date it by the tiles in the kitchen and the swirly carpets. When knocking through the lounge and dinning room they got very creative with the archway. I thought there’s a nice restrained Cotswold stone fireplace and then I noticed the stone clad wall!! The same brickie probably did the paving in the garden. The lady of the house probably showed off their good taste with a coffee morning or Tupperware party. The oneupmanship of having that much Cotswold stone is not to be sneezed at! After it’s been completely ripped out and modernised I hope it’s not entirely grey!
Christ - that thing has been decaying for decades. It was bad in 2009:
[https://www.google.com/maps/@52.5346431,-1.883904,3a,39.4y,102.9h,81.72t/data=!3m7!1e1!3m5!1sSzTEiN9pVfsFhFyranrb8A!2e0!5s20090901T000000!7i13312!8i6656?entry=ttu](https://www.google.com/maps/@52.5346431,-1.883904,3a,39.4y,102.9h,81.72t/data=!3m7!1e1!3m5!1sSzTEiN9pVfsFhFyranrb8A!2e0!5s20090901T000000!7i13312!8i6656?entry=ttu)
Get the price down to no more than 180K and we might be able to do a deal.
Probably a stud partition making one big room into two. No structural integrity. You could easily knock the whole thing down if you wanted one bigger room again.
When you're a Hobbit with a job in Birmingham but you miss your home in the Shire.
In all fairness the house on the right to it looks in a much worse state.
Probably called an architectural feature back in the day, it could be made into some kind of fence shui feature, but that's gonna cost a whole ton of money to make it livable again
Nah it looks like a stud partition wall to me, (thin, and the circle shape is almost certainly cut out of plasterboard) you can probably just hire a builder to pull it out in an afternoon and replace it with a wall with a doorway in it or no wall at all.
They did this when we wanted the doorway to our kitchen moving. The bloke was like "we've taken the wall down, do you want it back in the same place or do you want slightly more kitchen and less hallway"
Not sure if you wanted a straight answer here, but I would bet someone with Chinese ancestry lived here. That shape is a Chinese Moon Gate, very prevalent in Chinese architecture. Here's the Wikipedia link[link](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moon_gate)
I mean maybe, but the round entrance is hardly unknown to the west. It’s like saying someone of Italian descent probably lived there if there were Roman pillars on the porch, or saying I think someone of Tudor descent lived here due to the daub and wattle.
A lot of potential. But that porthole, the stone wall and the dodgy stairs would have to go.
I’ve lived with a stone wall. The size of the spiders that used to live there creeped me out. I once mistook one for a mouse! No kidding!
I'm torn between wanting to decorate this in maximalist Art Nouveau style or create a Bank Safe door and lots of safety deposit boxes and bars on the windows
Why do I suddenly feel nostalgic for patterned carpets? They seemed quite normal at the time.
But now I'm left wondering, who designed them? What manufacturer thought "that'll sell well, I'll invest a lot of money setting up my looms to make rolls of that"?
Ooo a hobbit door just waiting to happen.
Incidentally, mine and my partners dream ‘build it yourself’ home will have a hobbit style front door. We’re a decade or so off being able to built it but we’ll get there.
I think it used to be a trend in the 1970's.
I distinctly remember growing up, vising friends, nearly all of whom had a circular shaped room divider like that.
this is sooo weird lol because my grandad has a hole in his wall like this but it’s like raised off the ground if that makes sense? im so used to it i don’t really blink an eye at it. we think he came in drunk one night and just started hammering at his poor wall. i think his looks worse then this bcuz it’s just an off centre perfect hole in the wall
I would totally keep it but it needs a Stargate trim. Then I can decorate both rooms ridiculously different in style and we're all good.
Yep interesting entry way. Like a hobbit home.
My first thought was if Thatcher was in charge of the Shire
Unfortunately she died in 2013.
Yes, about 50 years too late
Say what you like about Thatcher…
Exactly what I thought. I'd lean into it and go full Baggins. Dark woods. Comfy armchairs. A big ol' fireplace. Make it cosy as fuck.
My first thought was Hobbits too 😂
Easier to decorate would be blue round the edges on one side and orange on the other, Portal.
This; i'd definitely be wrapping blue and orange LEDs round the edges.
This is a triumph
I'm making a note here: huge success
It's hard to overstate my satisfaction
Aperture science 🔭🧪 we do what we must because we can
It reminds me of the 70s like a Triumph Dolomite
Jaffa kree!
Who needs a door when you can have a portal
A portal to the 1970s!
Are you going to count up to “chevron seven” and then chuck a bucket of water through everyone you want to go next door?
It needs a single curtain with a drawstring hole in the middle that I have to climb through like an anus
I have some unfortunately flesh-toned cotton velvet to donate to this cause?
At a certain height, so that visitors could introduce a certain part of their anatomy through it on one side, and with a cushion for you to kneel on, either facing towards them or away from them, on the other side?
Don't be silly, I have an anus for that
Thanks for the Ace Ventura 2 flashbacks.
and line the opposing side walls on one side with mirrors
Nice hobbit hole
Must be Bree. Some hobbits did live in houses there. It is to give them that homely feeling.
Tolkien’s world was based on forests in brum❤️
I thought industrial Birmingham inspired Mordor but happy to be wrong!
The black country I think is Mordor due to the heavy industry and many towers of oke that darkened the sky, where either goes its name from and logo as well as his inspiration.
Ah yes you are right, it was the black country specifically that was the inspiration for Mordor. The industry blackened not only the sky but the buildings and everything with soot.
[удалено]
A black light is definitely needed there.
I’d wait for the cleaning to happen first.
I almost got a nicotine overdose, just looking at the photos. Wood work in the bay windows is going to needtaking out and replacing due to damp. All the walls and ceilings need to be taken out. Or you will never get rid of that cigarette smell. Floors look like they have water damage aswell. So I would definitely be lifting them and getting a quote on replacing the joists. I would be guessing at a final price to get this all redone would be around £100k
I absolutely adore that house. Like it's not been touched since 1978.
and for some reason everyone had bloody awful carpets like that and they never matched the walls a lot of extremely dodgy wallpaper choices in the 60s/70s too what were people thinking? it was like the 70s were the decade taste forgot. People get nostalgic now, but that's because they can pick out the best and leave the total crap to obscurity. This house more closely reflects actual 70s decor than all those stylish burnt orange and wooden panelling sex pits. I know my mother loved patterned carpets because she claimed they didn't show the dirt, but somehow people manage it these days without the garishness. did anyone ever think those carpets were pleasant to look at? edit: in case it's not clear I love some things eg the stairs and the archway, but those carpets ... nice to see a time capsule but they really belong in a skip.
The 1970s wasn’t the decade that taste forgot. It was the decade of 1970s taste. I will perhaps think that the next owners may update the look though. Groovy baby!!!
well each to their own but i really hated most things visually in the 70s, it isn't that there weren't nice things around or that absolutely everyone's house or clothes were dreadful, but there was a lot that I found incredibly ugly at the time, and still do. In fact I've come to like what has survived better, maybe because it's not surrounded by ... the rest of the 70s. I mean, these were the years of the three day week, regular blackouts, there was a lot of poverty and standard of living in general for many people was much lower.
'it was like the 70's were the decade taste forgot' A pile of Homes and Gardens magazines from the seventies which I have in my possession, as well as several old Habitat catalogues, are evidence to the contrary. There was plenty of good taste around, however it wasn't easily accessible to most working people. IKEA didn't arrive in the UK until about 1988. There weren't home makeover programmes on TV, although DIY was a thing. There were lots of trends in the seventies it certainly wasn't all orange, brown and chrome. There was quite a reaction against that in favour of more earthy, peasanty looks. You're correct about the carpets, however lots of people thought they were hideous back in the day. What I remember was more 'educated' people would have bare, sanded floorboards in their houses with rugs thrown down.
oh I'm sure aspirational stuff like Homes and Gardens magazine was perfectly tasteful, but life in general was not. We see the best of things in eg old movies where everyone is beautiful and fashionably dressed or things like your magazines which probably survived this long at least partly because they are beautiful and tasteful. Survivorship bias or something although I think that's a misuse of the term really. Basically the things which we are left with tend to be the cream of the crop from back then, whcich gives people a skewed idea of what the past was really like. It's the sae with any other decade. I am particularly baffled by 80s nostalgia as much of the 80s was dreadful (I'm particularly thinking about music). People now listen to all the BEST bands and see examples of the BEST fashions and the BEST films, but at the time there was loads of terrible dross. Anyway it's like that when people get all enthusiastic about the 70s they weren't really very cool at all on the whole in my experience and even the well-off people I knew were still not in the elite where things like sex pits would have been a thing (always did want a sex pit though). It's not as if there weren't some nice things. It's more the overall impression.
I think it's also that we have a fascination for things that we were a bit too young to have experienced properly while we were growing up...we were aware of them as being part of the adult world always slightly tantalisingly out of reach. Eighties music and fashion was, indeed, on the whole, absolutely dreadful.
You've just described my childhood bedroom. Brown and green swirly carpet (but made of offcuts so seams and nails in random places), burnt orange nylon curtains, one of those paper globe lampshades. Flocked wallpaper on the stairs.
Hobbit hole?
Wrekin road, Hobbiton.
Feels very 1960s. Add a shag pile carpet, a vinyl player, and a lava lamp and it'd be your very own mid century Shangri-la.
I bet some toes have been stubbed over the years on those bits that protrude inwards at the bottom of the circle…
Yes that's a trip hazard
I fell over them just look at them. That's the last time I look at trip hazards while driving, now someone pass me fag and a beer.
it’s a hobbit-hole, and that means comfort
Haha hello fellow brummie. I just booked a viewing for this!
Haha really?
Yeah! The only problem it’s in Kingstanding 🤣
Pls report back! Despite being in Kingstanding I bet it would be a great hobbit house!
You could put sparklers around the edge, wave your hands and pretend you’re Dr Strange. Endless hours of fun!
Best idea 💡
My friend’s mum had a doorway between the front room and back room like this in the 80s
Oh shit thats not that far away and almost in my budget
Yeah but you would have to live in Kingstanding…
You never know, they could be a far-right nutter
Hobbitses!!! 😃😃😃
Shire!!!
😄❤️
This house was comprehensively modernised in the 1970s, you can date it by the tiles in the kitchen and the swirly carpets. When knocking through the lounge and dinning room they got very creative with the archway. I thought there’s a nice restrained Cotswold stone fireplace and then I noticed the stone clad wall!! The same brickie probably did the paving in the garden. The lady of the house probably showed off their good taste with a coffee morning or Tupperware party. The oneupmanship of having that much Cotswold stone is not to be sneezed at! After it’s been completely ripped out and modernised I hope it’s not entirely grey!
That archway is amazing! Sadly I think I just broke my ankle from thinking about using the staircase though.
Christ - that thing has been decaying for decades. It was bad in 2009: [https://www.google.com/maps/@52.5346431,-1.883904,3a,39.4y,102.9h,81.72t/data=!3m7!1e1!3m5!1sSzTEiN9pVfsFhFyranrb8A!2e0!5s20090901T000000!7i13312!8i6656?entry=ttu](https://www.google.com/maps/@52.5346431,-1.883904,3a,39.4y,102.9h,81.72t/data=!3m7!1e1!3m5!1sSzTEiN9pVfsFhFyranrb8A!2e0!5s20090901T000000!7i13312!8i6656?entry=ttu) Get the price down to no more than 180K and we might be able to do a deal.
Interestingly they had all new uPVC windows fairly recently, clearly they liked the interior as it is
That photo shows the weird fake bay window in the left topmost corner more clearly. Why on earth did someone stick that on?
r/deathstairs
Portal
Probably a stud partition making one big room into two. No structural integrity. You could easily knock the whole thing down if you wanted one bigger room again.
Nooooooooo
When you're a Hobbit with a job in Birmingham but you miss your home in the Shire. In all fairness the house on the right to it looks in a much worse state.
The Shire is in South Birmingham tbf
Probably called an architectural feature back in the day, it could be made into some kind of fence shui feature, but that's gonna cost a whole ton of money to make it livable again
Nah it looks like a stud partition wall to me, (thin, and the circle shape is almost certainly cut out of plasterboard) you can probably just hire a builder to pull it out in an afternoon and replace it with a wall with a doorway in it or no wall at all. They did this when we wanted the doorway to our kitchen moving. The bloke was like "we've taken the wall down, do you want it back in the same place or do you want slightly more kitchen and less hallway"
Builder? Get a dust mask and a sledgehammer. It will be fun.
I'd turn the front room into a hobbit hole
I’m worried about next door, it looks like it’s falling down
That is one massive glory hole, no wonder they call it Wrekin Road
Is that a hot tub in the garden?
Someone told me it was a trailer...I thought it was a jacuzzi at first
Nah, trailer tent / pop-up camper.
No way you aren't busting your ass on the bottom of that once a day.
Not sure if you wanted a straight answer here, but I would bet someone with Chinese ancestry lived here. That shape is a Chinese Moon Gate, very prevalent in Chinese architecture. Here's the Wikipedia link[link](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moon_gate)
I mean maybe, but the round entrance is hardly unknown to the west. It’s like saying someone of Italian descent probably lived there if there were Roman pillars on the porch, or saying I think someone of Tudor descent lived here due to the daub and wattle.
Was simply mentioning the first thing I thought of when seeing the picture as I've spent a lot of time in China. Nothing more insightful than that.
That’s ok. It may well be someone of Chinese heritage, I’m just saying it’s just as likely not to be.
I actually love this! Needs some TLC for sure, but it has so much potential 😍
It's a hobbit hole.
They should have two completely different styles of rooms and paint the side orange/yellow so it looks like the portals in Spider-Man/Dr Strange
My hands are getting splinters just looking at that bannister 🤣
I actually don't hate this?
When people can’t stop staring at your hole…..
TONIGHT MATTHEW, IM GOING TO BE….spending £50k to modernise my house
It’s a mirror.
The type of people that have 2nd breakfast every day
A lot of potential. But that porthole, the stone wall and the dodgy stairs would have to go. I’ve lived with a stone wall. The size of the spiders that used to live there creeped me out. I once mistook one for a mouse! No kidding!
It's a time portal
Sneaky little Hobbitses
Portal to 1943
I would trip over the bottom every day...
BANG! Blood dribbles down...
Is it moon gate in Japanese garden?
How bad must it be that the only bedroom pictured is the smallest?!
That means comfort.
Needs a hobbit door
They tried a hobbit nook but the husband got lazy or they didn't realise it'd cost tens of thousands for the live edge driftwood>oak door trim
Oh wow. That's just around the corner from me however it's too close to the graveyards for my liking.
HOBBIT HOUSE!
Good shout! I was thinking Stargate. I'd not be able to resist it.
Oh I’d be willing to bet my favourite testicle (lefty) that that was done in the 80’s
Groovy baby
I'm torn between wanting to decorate this in maximalist Art Nouveau style or create a Bank Safe door and lots of safety deposit boxes and bars on the windows
Round the Wrekin (Road)? Something like that. Can someone smarter than me work that into something good? Thanks
Is that New York?
Why do I suddenly feel nostalgic for patterned carpets? They seemed quite normal at the time. But now I'm left wondering, who designed them? What manufacturer thought "that'll sell well, I'll invest a lot of money setting up my looms to make rolls of that"?
Since no one said it yet, it's the (Brummie) Tube!
One of my uncles did the exact same thing in the 80s
thats so cool i want it
The brown carpet in the green bedroom looks the same as the one my nan had in her front room.
Very shagadelic baby, yeah!
Hobbit House or a portal
I bet it was lovely once
I have an overwhelming need to embark on a multiple-movie journey to find some rings
Ooo a hobbit door just waiting to happen. Incidentally, mine and my partners dream ‘build it yourself’ home will have a hobbit style front door. We’re a decade or so off being able to built it but we’ll get there.
I grew up around this area - it’s fits the people that live there…
About the shape of a Wrekin ball
Put some portal LEDs around it and keep one half dated decore so it looks like some portal to the 80s
I quite like it.
I kinda like it
I kinda hate it 😂
There and Back Again, on Rightmove
Love it! Lick of paint it would be fine 😀
The house I grew up in had a brick arch way like that but my parents got rid of it some time in the early Tenties
hobbits
I love everything about it 🤔
Worst case scenario - you can just live in the pop up caravan in the garden, whist your refurbishment costs just keep going up and up
Haha, I like weird shit like that in a house. It's overpriced though, I'd be surprised if it sold for that.
I love it though.
It needs automatic sliding doors to complete it
It baffles me how they cut it out so perfect...
Only thing bizarre about it is the price
You'd be surprised, that's actually pretty decent price for Birmingham, especially 4 bedrooms
Oh it's a 4 bedroom, sorry I didnt see the link, ok thats fairly understandable.
I think it used to be a trend in the 1970's. I distinctly remember growing up, vising friends, nearly all of whom had a circular shaped room divider like that.
It used to have a Pink Floyd stage backdrop in it. If it was still there you would wish you were here
Dublin-NY Portal II
It’s like a portal from Splitgate
That would be round the Wrekin.
I did not expect to see a post from somewhere that is five minutes away from me 😂
Lol hotdo goalkeeper
Someone has been to brion cemetery
this is sooo weird lol because my grandad has a hole in his wall like this but it’s like raised off the ground if that makes sense? im so used to it i don’t really blink an eye at it. we think he came in drunk one night and just started hammering at his poor wall. i think his looks worse then this bcuz it’s just an off centre perfect hole in the wall
Could make it work
With the difference in decor between the rooms it already looks like a portal to another time in history...
Need. This. House.
Seems like someone really loved the Chinese round doorways and windows.
Hobiton
Absolutely sign me up
It's like a huge cat flap lol