The hateful sterility of new-build houses

Where do you stand on new houses? You know, the little red boxes you see massed along the sides of motorways or clustered on what used to be flood plains? They’re hateful, aren’t they?

Now, I know many people (my mother included) who own perfectly lovely new houses – and these houses are indeed all very lovely, and I bow to their pragmatism in putting basic necessities such as effective heating and draught-free corridors above the concerns of taste or aesthetics. But I can’t do it.

Whether it’s down to the fact that the windows are a funny shape and as impossible to open as those on an Airbus, or that there are fire doors everywhere with nasty brass handles, or that the ceilings are too low, I could not tell you. Perhaps it’s the fact that the space in each new-build property has been apportioned so efficiently that you feel like its design has been an act of actuarial precision rather than architecture. Perhaps it’s all these things and more.

It’s their chimneyless roofs; their brilliant, insistent brickwork that makes you think of a shopping mall in Dubai. It’s the suffocating expanse of carpet everywhere and the post-apocalyptic sterility of the little cul-de-sacs arranged with all these houses far too big for the individual plots so that they resemble an army of steroidal body-builders sitting side-by-side on the District line.

It’s also the fact that they’re so well insulated – that the heating is so Teutonically efficient – that were you locked inside one with the thermostat up, you’d doubtless be found lifeless and prone, like mummified husk, within 48 hours. No wonder people walk around with huge bottles of water now. They need to keep topping up otherwise the house will kill them.

The sad truth is that new houses are simply joyless. Through their repetitious blandness and their damp-free efficiency they offer no charm, no challenge, no dry rot.

It’ll come as no surprise to discover that I live in a house built in the year of the Charge of the Light Brigade, which means – to my thinking – that it’s quite new because it’s only 170 years old. We don’t have thatch, for example (more’s the pity).

But we do have a cellar that will imitate the Poseidon Adventure if you switch off the pump. We have landings and empty corners that offer breathing space but are essentially useless. We have ceilings that you need a stepladder to reach, and we have absurdly large Georgian windows which are daily delight – one which the builders of the great cathedrals of Europe would recognise – because of the light that pours through them.

Of course, they’re a practical disaster. Collectively they have the square footage of a squash court which means that our house is colder than a Norwegian fridge magnet. Even the dog has an electric blanket.

But, personally, I would take the damp under the dining room floor (fixed at no small cost and inconvenience); I would take the perilously leaning brick wall in the garden and the ivy keeping it up; I would take the charming roof above the utility room and downstairs loo that leaks like sieve when it rains hard from the North; I would take all these inconveniences for the sheer, utter charm of the whole.

That’s because living in an old house is like dancing with Audrey Hepburn, or flying in a Tiger Moth, or staring into the canvas of an Old Master. Yes, there’s damp on the wall in the sitting room, yes, there are cracks in the plaster, yes, yes, yes, the lime mortar between the bricks will need addressing. But look at that cluster of elegant chimneys; look at those fireplaces; admire those ruinously expensive Georgian windows that will need painting again soon. (Alas the only thing our house doesn’t have is a priest hole – a neighbour rather excitedly showed me his, and I’ve had priest-hole envy ever since.)

Of course, all this is strictly a personal choice. For millions of people, a new house – with its driveway measured to the dimensions of a BMW 5 Series, its fitted kitchen and its boiler and efficient radiators that will do you another 25 years – is preferable. But I’ve come to realise that this preference points to an essential bifurcation in life. Are you a Cavalier or Roundhead? Are you a romantic or a pragmatist? Are you a dreamer or schemer? I’m a Cavalier, regardless of the fact that Charles I was obviously wrong and lost. I know that in 1640 I’d have been a Royalist. And that’s why I like old houses.

I have a theory, also, that this correlates with the bifurcation of our age – Brexit. Are you Leave or Remain? Can you imagine Boris Johnson ever living in a new house, unless you’re talking a £20 million job overlooking Hyde Park built by the Sweetie Brothers? Not a chance. He’s got old house written all over him, and that’s because he’s both cavalier and a Cavalier. On the other hand, you could easily see Liz Truss – a Remainer in origin – happily dabbing at her Nest app in a new, bright-bricked house outside Maidenhead. And that’s because she’s very clearly about as Cavalier as a cockapoo and has Roundhead written all over her.

The correlation is not absolute. Even though I love old houses, I voted Remain (although like a lot of voters I wasn’t that bothered when I woke up in a cold house to discover the result). And what about Oliver Cromwell himself? How would the nation’s ultimate Roundhead have voted in 2016? I suspect he’d be a Brexiteer, which goes against the argument. 

But given the choice, you know Cromwell would be a new house man… sitting in the back of his carriage, the Lord Protector would be quietly stroking his colossal mole and remotely adjusting the boiler’s output for increased efficiency. After all, ‘Work hard, trust in God ­– and keep your bowels open’ is not the motto of a man who would put up with leaky Georgian windows if he didn’t have to.