The small terraced house is a familiar sight throughout urban areas of the United Kingdom, but few people
realise the significance of this humble dwelling in lifting hundreds of thousands of souls from the miseries of
Victorian poverty. Dr Gareth Carr is a Registered Architect and Senior Lecturer in the Built Environment at
Wrexham University. In his talk, he explained how the gradual introduction of local legislation drove
improvements in the arrangement of interior and exterior space, until the ‘bye-law terraced house’ emerged as
a transformational building type in the improvement of public health. The talk helped those of us who
walk past these houses every day to come to appreciate the important contribution of the ‘bye-law terraced
house’ to the social history of our towns and cities. 103 members attended.