Colourful quayside houses, Weymouth

This terrace of houses on the quayside of Weymouth harbour shone in the light of the summer evening, and revealed details that suggest they date from the early nineteenth century. The bowed oriel windows, the fanlights and open-book keystones, the parapet hiding the low-pitched roofs all say early 1800s. The colour wash does too, though not the royal blue and turquoise - they are painted after the fancy of someone nearer in time to us.

photo © T. Boughen     Camera: Nikon Z 5

Beautiful tiny gardens

This terrace with cottage-like fronts is on an urban street in Ledbury, Herefordshire. I've often walked by it and enjoyed how so much has been made of so little. The small canopy porches break up the essentially flat facades and give a focal point to the exterior of each dwelling. Rather than fill the space between the public pavement and the house with solid material - stone, concrete, gravel etc - a very modest garden strip, about two feet deep, has been created and the owners have used it for conifers, annuals, perennial, shrubs, climbing and rambling roses, and pots with plants. This has transformed the buildings and given them a pretty, homely, almost rural character that is a pleasure to behold.

photo © T. Boughen     Camera: iPhone

St Katherine's Terrace, Ledbury

How do you give the front of your modest house a visual "lift"? Answer: paint it a bright or strong colour. How do you give it a further lift? Answer: find a way to to get your neighbours to do the same. The truth of this can be seen at St Katherine's Terrace in Ledbury, and at many other locations across the country. If you don't believe me, just imagine the doors in the photograph were painted white!

photo © T. Boughen     Camera: Lumix FZ1000 2

Painted houses

Painted houses are not unusual in the UK. White, cream, pale blue, pink, ochre, green, primrose, dark red, and other muted colours are reasonably common. However, houses painted in what I consider strident colours are rare. So when I saw the acid yellow of this house in Abergavenny I went "Ouch!" Presumably it pleases the owner, although its not unusual to hear of people applying colour that looks different when on walls compared with how it looked in the can. The photograph shows the back of the terrace of houses that overlooks the fields adjoining the River Usk. The frontages are next to a road. The summit rearing up behind the houses is Sugar Loaf.

photo © T. Boughen     Camera: Lumix FZ1000 2

Cobble-faced cottages, Holt

This terrace of cobble-faced cottages dates from the early to mid-nineteenth century. They can be found on one side of Albert Street in the small town of Holt, Norfolk, a place where they are accompanied by many more buildings that are faced with these small, water-worn pebbles.

I noted them several years ago and saw them once again when I was watching an episode of "Dad's Army", a comedy TV series based on Britain's WW2 Home Guard. The series was filmed in Norfolk and the production team must have thought the distinctive features of this row of humble houses would be a good backdrop for one of the scenes.

photo © T. Boughen     Camera: Nikon D5300     2015

A purple door

Wilson Street in Newark, Nottinghamshire features a plain Georgian terrace, brick-built in Flemish bond, with colourful doors. The fact that each door is a different, very bright colour, makes me think the row has a single owner. Another odd feature of the terrace is that each door bears two numbers and two doorbells, indicating that it serves as the entry to two dwellings. I've photographed the terrace before because of the doors and the way it is lit by the sun. The photograph above was taken solely because of the impact of that purple door.

photo © T. Boughen     Camera: Sony DSC-RX100     2017

Terrace, Amwell St, London

London has magnificent and historic houses a-plenty, but, being a major city of long standing it also has a wide variety of lesser houses, buildings for middling and lower incomes. On a recent walk through streets I've never been down before I came across this Late Georgian terrace in Amwell Street, Islington. It is on a slight slope, dates from 1828-29, and is the work of William Chadwell Mylne, Surveyor for the New River Estate. Like many houses of this era they feature yellow stock brick in Flemish bond. Each is three storeys with a basement and the roof hidden behind a parapet. The iron railings and balconies look original, as do the fanlights of the two leftmost houses, and most of the glazing bars. It is unremarkable housing, not without utilitarian charm, and still providing homes nearly two hundred years after they were constructed.

photo © T. Boughen     Camera: Sony DSC-RX100

Victorian brickwork

A sunlit subject under a dark threatening sky always appeals to me. Even the most familiar subject such as a dying tree, a rooftop, or the St Pancras hotel can be elevated by such a juxtaposition. This terrace of houses on Mill Street, Hereford, dating from 1881, has benefited with attention being drawn to the decorative Victorian brickwork that enlivens the main facades.

photo © T. Boughen     Camera: Sony DSC-RX100

Victoria Place, Newport

Walking up the hill out of the centre of Newport, through unremarkable and past its best Victorian workers' housing, we came upon the surprise that is Victoria Place.This is two terraces of six houses that face each other across a short street. The builders levelled this site before building - there is the first surprise. Subsequent owners have treated both terraces as the unity they are and painted them with a single colour scheme - the second surprise. They date from 1844 and were built by Rennie Logan & Company, contractors for the Town Dock. Would that more such buildings were maintained with the sensitivity accorded to these rows.

photo © T. Boughen     Camera: Sony DSC-RX100

Colourful houses

This terrace of houses in Ross on Wye, Herefordshire, probably dates from the late nineteenth or early twentieth century. It would have been built as "worker housing". Over the years they will have needed maintenance, renovation and updating. And, somewhere along the line, probably in the second half of the twentieth century, one of the occupiers decided they needed an injection of strong colour. Other neighbours seem to have followed suit, each determined to chooses a different shade. I wouldn't choose any of these bright colours for my house, but I enjoyed seeing them together en masse, hence my photograph.

photo © T. Boughen     Camera: Sony DSC-RX100