Fascinating Glimpse Of A 1930s House In An Old Black & White Movie!

Whilst researching for specific information on 1930s houses on the internet, I came across this fascinating 1930s black and white film  of the Highbury Homes Estate, Cosham in Portsmouth. 
 

The film begins by showing us a wide variety of fireplaces, that  residents on the Highbury Estate would have been able to choose from....my favourites are the wooden surrounds with built in over mantle mirrors. Then the film takes us on a tour around the house showing us labour saving appliances in the kitchen....just take a look at that sink and mangle, plus the gas cooker with the decorative frieze above the tiles and that maid saver with all the pull out "tea, coffee, sugar drawers", etc....absolutely fabulous! Then we are allowed a peek at the " modern indoor bathroom"....quite a luxury back then, with bath, sink and toilet. 

If you are interested in 1930s decor, or maybe needing authentic detailed information on interior decor for a miniature 1930s project (like me), you may find this very useful indeed. The film itself is a bit shaky and also a bit dark in places, but if you persevere it is well worth it.

Towards the end of the film we are shown a selection of streets  from the Highbury Estate which includes Chatsworth Avenue, Highbury Grove and Edgerly Gardens. Those same streets with these houses are still standing even now.  

If after viewing the film and you have quite a few minutes to spare, try typing in any of the above streets in Portsmouth (UK) on Google Maps and then tour around them in Street View - it is truly fascinating to compare what those streets looked like back then to what they look like now! 

After trawling through Street View of the estate, l was left wondering how many of the houses on that estate  still have any of the internal original features remaining, ....haha, actually it is unlikely that none of them still have the gas cooker, mangle or indeed even the maid saver!

In fact, I was so intrigued by all this that I hit on the idea of searching local estate agent websites via Google Search and sure enough, I found a random selection of houses from all three of those roads up for sale at the moment, complete with online internal images of each house. The results of this search were fascinating and surprising....although I found one of the houses that probably had the original bathroom suite, I don't think there were any of the original fireplaces left in any of the houses that I could see. Surely they could not ALL have been ripped out...they were beautiful!

My goodness...how times have changed!