THE CONCERTINA HOUSE ARRIVES

Northern Advocate, 24 October 1936, Page 8

THE CONCERTINA HOUSE ARRIVES

Things We Have Read

pHE concertina house has arrived. It is a house which expands or contracts according to the needs of the family, and the first of its type is shortly' to be built at Hamble (Hampshire).

v- The idea,’which has been approved by the Ministry of Health and is likely to be widely adopted in the planning of couricil houses, comes from Mr W. R. Cowell, architect and surveyor to the Winchester Plural District Council. • Mr dowell lias taken the Ministry’s own plans [under 1 the 1935 overcrowding Act; and pieced them together to make a terraceof four houses. f ' He has adapted the plans so that if Mr and Mrs Brbwn, who live in the f our-bedroomed corner house with their tWb children; are suddenly blessed with twin.Sj tWQ-jm ore bedrooms can be borcpVted>>£srom the next-door house. , •’ ..

As the upstairs passages in the adjoining houses are only separated by a party wall this can be done by removing a few square feet of brickwork and replacing it fulfther down the passage. In this way. Mr and Mrs Brown’s house, while increased in size by two bedrooms, is still self-contain-ed.

In the same way the next-door house becomes a two-bedroomed house suitable for a newly-married couple. When the Brown family grows up and the children leave home, the idea is that at a percentage reduction in rent they would hand back bedrooms they had borrowed to the possibly growing family next door.

“The idea,” Mr Cowell said, “is to provide elastic houses for elastic families.”

Mr Cowell has designed a pleasant facade for his concertina . houses, which are being built in red brick with brown tiles to harmonise with the surrounding countryside.

WEAL OR WOE TWINS. pHOMAS and William, five-year-old twins of Mr and Mrs Stockey, living in Patricroft, share their pleasures—and their illnesses, no matter how far apart they may be.

A curious example of this phenomenon has been revealed by an accident to one of them.

Thomas was playing at tent-making with friends near his home. One of the boys was hammering with the flat side of an axe and Thomas was standing behind him. The axe went too high and injured Thomas’s left eye.

He was taken to the Eccles and Patricroft Hospital and immediately transferred to the Royal Manchester Children’s Hospital at Pendlebury, There surgeons are fighting to save his sight.

Shortly after the accident William’s left eye began to swell.

“It was inflamed and watering,” Mrs Stockey told the “News Chronicle.” “We have had to bathe it and apply bandages and keep him in bed.”

“When anything happens to one,” said Mr Stockey, “it always happens to the other, A short time ago one of the twins was in the house and he complained of earache.

“We did our best for him, but a few minutes later the other, who had been playing outside and had not seen his brother, came in. His first words were to complain of earache.

“It happens in the same way with toothache and other ailments. We know they are not ‘conspiring’ because on several occasions .they have not been near each other all day. It was the same when they were, much too young to plot anything.”

GIRL DRIFTS TO DEATH ON AIR MATTRESS. A GIRL camper who had drifted more than a mile out to sea on an air mattress lost her life off Shoeburyness recently. She was Katherine Ivy Dodkin (20), a wireless assembler, of Ingleton Road, Fore Street, Edmonton, London, N. After drifting for some time the girl apparently panicked, fell into the water and struggled towards a cabin yacht Which was lying at anchor. The occupants of the yacht dragged her aboard unconscious.

Two policemen, Constables Davies and Eyres, wearing rubber thigh boots, waded out to the yacht carrying between them oxygen apparatus. For an hour and a half the constables, helped by ambulance workers and a doctor who was among the bathers, vainly applied artificial respiration, but all efforts failed.

THIS IS WHERE THE WOMEN LAUGH.

QONDEMNING the “stupidly conservative” attitude of men towards their dress, Mr L. E. Dart, a Lincoln tailor, suggests the publication of a chart of fashion to educate them into accepting more frequent and notable changes in style and variety of materials. Speaking at the annual) meeting in London of the National Federation of Merchant Tailors he said, : “It is truly amazing to see men on hot, sunny days sweltering in thick unsuitable clothes. “Woman has long since emancipated herself in the matter of wearing apparel, and I wo-uld like to see tailors making a supreme effort to educate their clientele into wearing clothes which can be comfortable, without losing anything in elegance or distinction.'”