Rendered skirt around Victorian house?

[Spoilt Victorian Child]

Most of the Victorian houses in my area have an exterior skirt of render around their base - from the floor up to the lower windowsills.

Is that how these houses would have originally looked?
Does the render serve a purpose or is it just for decoration?

I'm having mine painted, and in some places the top layer of render is falling off, and hollow sounding in other places.
From the photos attached can anyone tell me if my skirt is lime render or cement?

How should I go about looking after this 'feature'?

 

[plasticpigeon]

I don't think that would have been part of the original construction or at least I haven't seen that in my area.I had sections of the bottom of my house rendered with a plinth, but that was in a mistaken belief it would hold back damp and also to hide some rather poorly brickwork. I've seen the ground floors of old houses rendered and rusticted, but up to the first floor level. However I am not very familiar with the London vernacular. Seeems likeley that in response to either bricks needing repointing, or bricks spalling or cracking it became commonplace in your area to render up to a couple of feet. Perhaps that was one builder's trademark and it caught on!!! If anyone knows any different please say.

 

[88v8]

My previous house had a cement plinth from new, about a foot high.
Wouldn't have said yours was original, as they have cack-handedly submerged the brick joints.

Where it's coming off it looks like cement. Put a bit in vinegar and see if it fizzes. If it does, it's lime.

Paint... it will come off unless you remove what's there and then use an alkali-resistant primer. No good just painting over bad paint.
https://www.duluxdecoratorcentre.co.uk/view-product/dulux-trade-alkali-resisting-primer

Ivor

 

[JanieB]

The houses in the town I live in have this as a common feature, and I'm sure they are original.

I was going to add a picture of our terrace but it's too big and I'm only taking a coffee break so I don't have time to faff about with it.

 

[88v8]

...only taking a coffee break so I don't have time to faff about with it.

What you need is a percolator. And a grinder. Then you'll have plenty of time.

Ivor

How can a terrace be too big...

 

[Spoilt Victorian Child]

Looking at the attached picture of a London Victorian house in 1900, you can *just* see what looks like a 1 brick high skirt, where the air bricks are.

I found the picture on Flikr, you can zoom right in and see if you follow the link: https://www.flickr.com/photos/-phraser-/15574191179/ (I absolutley love this picture, it shows exactly how front gardens/gates/fences looked. The house must've been very new as the footpath was still not laid).

Examining my own house more closely, I can see the render is/was covering damp proof drill holes. I wonder if in my area the skirts would've been very low, as in the photograph, and in the 70s/80s a plague of damp-proofing caused them all to be re-rendered higher as a 'tidy up'?

 

[Penners]

This is pure guesswork, but if the house has always had a paved path around it (or at least for a long time), as shown in your top picture, it's possible that the rendering was done as an attempted solution to damp ingress from "rain bounce" against the wall.