Bydlení ve Velké Británii (Housing in Great Britain)
Over half of the dwellings in Britain are owned by their occupies – the average Englishman prefers to own his house, however small. About a third is owned by public authorities and the reminder, mainly older houses, are rented from private landlords.
About three quarters of all the dwellings in Britain are houses of four to six rooms, usually of two storeys, either semidetached (joined to another house on one side only) or terraced (joined to other houses on both sides). One eight are detached houses (standing by themselves) and the remaining eight are flats.
In central areas of towns some bigger houses had more floors, but even a house with four floors was usually the same pattern, with a basement for servants and the top rooms for the children.
Houses standing alone in their own grounds were normally very large.
The most glorious period of British architecture was the Georgian period the late 18the and the early 19th centuries)
- The rows of red brick town houses built in the 19th century. Many of these were of very poor quality and lacked basic sanitary facilities. In programmes of urban renewal and slum clearance these substandard houses are being demolished and replaced by block of flats.
- In the early 20th century, public authorities started building houses and letting them to poor people at less than economic rent in order to enable them to live in healthy conditions. Every local council has a long list of people who want to live in these council houses.
Buying a house
In order to buy a house, a person does not usually need to have all the money to pay for it: there exist many special associations called building societies from which are possible to borrow up to almost the total value of the house. A typical borrower pays back the loan on his house (pays off the mortgage) in about twenty years.
The great country houses and stately homes have become too difficult and costly for their titled owners to keep up. Now the owners often live in one wing, and open the rest of the house to the public.
- authorities – úřady
- landlord – majitel
- reminder – zbytek
- dwelling – obytná jednotka, příbytek
- storey – podlaží, patro
- terraced houses – row houses (am) – řadovka
- council house – dům pronajatý městem
- council – městská rada
- country house – venkovské sídlo
- maintain – udržovat
- pay off – splatit
- stately home – panské sídlo
- substandard – podřadný
- furnishings – bytové zařízení
