original floors in late Victorian Welsh cottage?

[tycarregydwr]

Now our house this time - the semi-detached cottage is now on the market (thank god - mad, mad neighbours are gone!) and I went to have a look around. It has also been pebble-dashed and UPVC windows, but inside not that much appears to have been 'modernised'. It has modern CH, but appears to have most or all original walls - not plasterboard but crumbly lime. It has badly fitted carpets - I lifted one corner and it looked like cement but under another corner what looked like cement was actually sandy and crumbly to the touch.

We don't know what our floors were originally - they were cemented in the 1950s or 60s, with just one small area of what is probably original tile remaining.

I am curious about next door's floors. What might they have been originally? It was built around 1900, a reasonably sized Victorian cottage presumably for workers at the mill owned by the builders of our house. The area (in west Wales) is very wet, so unlikely to have had any kind of timber floor. Would they have been tile or stone, or was there some period equivalent of limecrete that would have had a lime layer on top?

 

[JoceAndChris]

I wonder if they are lime ash floors? We have one upstairs similar to what you describe.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lime-ash_floor

 

[tycarregydwr]

Interesting, thank you for the link. It does say that these were typically used as floors in the upper stories of the house. I didn't look at the floors upstairs to be honest, I was looking at the ground level.

 

[Penners]

I am curious about next door's floors. What might they have been originally? It was built around 1900

That's very difficult to guess. Despite the dampness of the area, they might still have been suspended floors. Alternatively, if yours is an area where stone or slate is liberally used, they might have been flags laid on Mother Earth.

 

[plasticpigeon]

But also I believe quarry tiles were made and used in wales too, Ruabon for example.

 

[CliffordPope]

Our house (c 1880) near Cardigan has the original floors. They are quarry tiles laid straight on the earth, with a dab of mortar at each corner to keep them roughly levelled.
Our cottage (c 18th century) had the remains of what I believe was a soot floor - they just mixed soot and animal fat and trod it in. In the end it caked into fairly solid slab.

 

[vicky whitworth]

"they just mixed soot and animal fat and trod it in"

My kitchen floor is like that. It's not supposed to be but what can you do in winter when you have animals

My new cleaner arrived last week to help out while I'm incapacitated. 'What do you use to wash your floors?' was her first question to my husband who just stood there looking dumbfounded. He wasn't aware that you can wash slate floors. The man who walks in from digging the garden in his wellies.

 

[Penners]

The man who walks in from digging the garden in his wellies.

He has a garden in his wellies?! :shock: