On Sep 12, 5:15*am, Cheryl wrote:



I've always thought that the older the building, the more likely it was
that indoor toilets were added as an afterthought, whereever they could
be squeezed in.


In some of the older council houses in East London (I have a couple of
friends who live in them)- the toilets were originally outside (I just
remember using an outside toilet) and there were no baths but there
was a big room at the back of the house for storing coal so now these
older houses have the bathroom and toilet on the ground floor behind
the kitchen. Hugh and Mark who live with this arrangement say it's a
real problem when you wake up in the night and need to use the toilet
because you have to go downstairs and through the living room and the
kitchen to reach the facilities without putting the light on so you
wake the other person up and without tripping over Chloe, Tigger or
Bandit in the dark

.. The mens' toilet was in a sensible and
accessible place on the main floor. The womens' toilet, clearly an
afterthought, was in the basement, down a long flight of stairs and
along a corridor.

In many older pubs in London, the gents is on the same level as the
bar but the women's is upstairs or downstairs apparently because the
women's was an afterthought because many years ago women did not go
into pubs (in some pubs a women on her own can still get some funny
looks around here) and anyway they were considered less likely to get
drunk so it was safer to have their toilet upstairs rather than the
men's one.

Some European homes I've been in had the toilet and bathtub in different
rooms, which was rather odd to my eyes!

It's not common but I would love to have it here- there's few things
more annoying then being stretched out in a hot bath with a good book
in the middle of a long soak and having Dave banging on the door
because he needs to use the toilet!

Lesley

Slave of the Fabulous Furballs