“Oooh!” you say. “I want to live in a public bathroom, yes I do!”
To which I reply, “Sorry, dear reader, but it’s Not For Sale Wednesday and this house is not for sale.”
This former public restroom, former ammunition depot is being rented by a couple who fixed it all up and made it into a rather charming house. (I have the impression that everything in England is a rental with, like, 500 year leases, and in theory the queen could evict everyone if she wanted to, and wouldn’t that be a busy day for U-Haul?)
I raise my mug in a toast to people who can look at a public lavatory — that’s the “before” picture on top — see past 100 years of use by the public for all sorts of unpleasant things, and figure out how to fix the place up; me, I still have pictures hanging on the wall that are just where we stuck ‘em because the previous owners had nails there. Cheers!
Found by: Sandra
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I have to say, that is one hell of a kitchen job… NICE
+1
I also get the feeling that in Britain they use restrooms as, well… restrooms, and not for all the disgusting things we use them for here.
Of course maybe I have an idealized view of that side of the pond that has been fosterd by years of idolizing Jane Austen. Maybe.
Even Elinor had to use the facilities, surely?
Given the owner’s last name, wouldn’t the appropriate comparison be Emma?
I think everyone but the queen pees. (The queen doesn’t do anything so base and common I’m sure), but we don’t have “restrooms”, just public toilets. There’s one near my house that has been converted into a flower shop called “Flowers at your convenience”
My wife has had the pleasure of sitting on the Queen’s “throne”
She was visiting (i.e. snuck in after a drunken night out) the dormitory at Cambridge which had been occupied by Prince Charles and a special facility had be installed for Mummy when she came to visit herself (presumably somewhat less inebriated though), and had the opportunity to feel what it was like to be queen for a few minutes *grins*.
The true meaning of the word ‘throne’.
Well a FOAF has one of the Queens pubes in a matchbox.
Y’see if the Queen visits somewhere there has to be a toilet set aside just for her.
So the Queen went to visit where my friend of a friend works. She had to pee so went use the special Queens only loo.
The FOAF went in straight after her and there was a pube on the seat. He nabbed it and stuck it in a matchbox.
I was reading the comment section after the article and thought this opinion was high-larious. Really? Are people truly peeing in the streets left and right over there and causing that big of a problem? I would suggest they pee in that big Bay that’s just sitting there:
And they wonder why people have to pee in the streets, it is wrong to sell public toilets they are needed for the use they were intended for and not to be sold off to be someones home Fix them up for the pupose they were built for and nothing more.
- BD, newcastle, 04/5/2010 23:48
Feh. People pee in the streets because the public lavvies are all closed because they were vandalised, taken over by druggies or turned into cottages. And that would be the gay men bonking kind, not the sweet little house kind.
The stupid thing is that due to declining funds and lower council taxes these properties that were once public facilities will just rot because they cannot be maintained in good condition and cleaned. So they get closed.
I would much prefer that something like this happen than the empty unused buildings become an eyesore.
The UK has lost a ridiculous number of public facilities in recent years, 40% over 12 years if memory serves. It used to be that you could find one without much trouble at all but now when you find one they usually want money to use it too.
That’s what Starbucks is for — in the US, anyway.
Americans think it absurd to pay to use a public bathroom. (I’m avoiding the word “restroom” since when I asked for one in the UK, they looked at me like I was out of my mind.)
I’m rather torn on the subject. On the one hand, the ability to take care of necessary business in an authorized, private place, whether or not I have cash on me, is very important to me. I understand the problems caused when the cash-strapped are forced to use street corners. On the other hand, I can see in the European lavatories the nice results of such funding. When I arrived by train in Venice at 5:30 a.m., one cold February morning, and NOTHING was open, I gladly paid a Euro to sit in the Ladies’ room for an hour or two, as it was the warmest and cleanest place in the whole train station, and provided me a nice quiet stall to sit and read a book.
Hmm. I suppose it depends on what you consider pleasant, or conducive to rest.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cottaging
Here’s the Google street map view: http://maps.google.com/maps?q=Scarborough,+united+kingdom&ie=UTF8&hq=&hnear=Scarborough,+United+Kingdom&gl=us&ei=Syv9S4S1IpPKNbn6td8B&ved=0CB4Q8gEwAA&ll=54.287801,-0.400749&spn=0.001134,0.003232&t=h&z=19&layer=c&cbll=54.288216,-0.401384&panoid=uee8vyR95X23o_1WU-VEcg&cbp=12,192.69,,0,17.77
(Un)fortunately for U-haul, they don’t operate over here in Britain. It’d be weird taking someone to visit your house though!
How nice for Chair’s cousins to pitch in and help! But maybe we could take up a collection and buy them some nightstands.
This is exactly the type of place I want to live in.
I can see the potential and with everything over there so expensive unless you live the Outer Hebrides, one has to be creative. I love this site and wish our just listed residence would have something so odd and freaky about it that you could feature it. But it is just an ordinary 1850s brick house. Although there is the odd leak in the basement, and the haunted backstairs.
If it has a succubus and the walls drip blood, I think you’re in.
Wow – that place used to be a big dump.
Hee!
Hmm. In the US, this type of housing is usually found in Flushing, NY. Of course, I’m basin this assumption on what a friend of mine said. He went there and apparently got conned in a real estate scam- he really took a bath on that deal. He had to be showered with sympathy after losing everything.
I suppose, after tapping his savings account for the down payment, he got a sinking sensation that the deal was going down the toilet. A shame really, that his savings were drained. Perhaps, instead of buying, he should have countered with a lower offer.
I remember reading about this – what I thought was peculiar was that they had purposefully left some sort of identifying marker on the building because it was “historic,” leading to the reasonably foreseeable outcome of people occasionally trying to enter their home. I suppose this gives them something to complain about and a social life of sorts… nothing else about the situation really struck me as eccentric.
Its a listed building which means that the councils will only let you do certain things to the outside and it has to remain consistent to the period it resembles.
Ah. Perhaps that was it. Still, I think in their place I’d have negotiated a tasteful little “This is a private dwelling” plaque.
Can’t really beat the view or the price. Nice remodel too.
I don’t know what it is, but I could never live in a ex public washroom no matter how nice it is.
Same here.
I don’t know, once you’ve finally got rid of George Michael it probably isn’t so bad…
at the sibling site ugliest tattoos you’ll see someone who has enormous dedication to the chair.
Lovely little home, and the price is certainly right. Yes, it is just a lease, but for the location and price per month for 21 years, it certainly seems reasonable ( 1,800 GBP per year for 21 years, or around $2700 a year). You couldn’t live in a small house for that sort of money, so to me it seems like a good deal.
I suppose, having been a public potty and an ammunition depot, it would be wrong to refer to it as an “ammunition dump.”
*snicker*
“I still have pictures hanging on the wall that are just where we stuck ‘em because the previous owners had nails there. Cheers!”
This is so true. We had several rooms in our house we were forced to repaint when we bought it, so the one room that had a decent coat of paint… well it’s an off-white and I hate off-white, so without bothering to plaster we covered up every inch of available wall with posters, drawings, etc. that we’d gathered over the years of our lives.
Which, since it was a small room, actually got most of it. Yay!
If you check the streetview link, there used to be another building to the side of it that sold ice cream and did tea et al. As for the loo that had been closed for at least 10 years before it got bought so it’d been a long time since it was used for that purpose. There are still public loos in Scarborough but most are located in areas with a higher volume of people, such as the castle to the left, as well as in the bay round the other side of the castle.
Really something needed to happen to the building as to let it rot further would have compromised the road above so might as well live in it.