What is the name of the sunken area in front of a Victorian terraced house

[rmw2007]

Location: UK

Comments

[reynardo]

I always think of it as the old Servants' entrance. Have a read of this description.

[rmw2007]

Hey, thanks for that. Looks like it is officially called the 'area.

[sollersuk]

That's right, boring though it sounds. A number of houses near where I grew up, including one where a friend of mine lived, had them. The main functions were a) to make it harder to break-and-enter through the house windows, b) provide some daylight for the downstairs kitchen, and c) provide access to the coal store - coal was tipped in through coalholes in the pavement, usually with decorative cast iron round covers. It was also where dustbins were stored; mostly used for cinders and ash from the fires, as the Victorians were kings of recycling.

[sollersuk]

Oh, and also to take deliveries - and consequently allow the kitchen staff to interact with the deliverymen - very useful when the house rule was "no followers". And not just those delivering; there's a Punch cartoon of a very disconcerted policeman who had struck up a relationship with the cook, and had been whistling down the area to attract her attention, discovering that she has been replaced by a Chinese man.

[silentg_canada]

I looked but didn't find anything definitive, but I'd suggest a few other search terms to try.

Reading up on the terms 'stoop' and 'brownstone' might yield something, and also including the term "below grade".

Frankly, I've often heard it referred to as the front garden, but I don't know if that's helpful.

[rmw2007]

I think of the stoop as the flight of steps, rather than the space in front of the house, although it sounds like a very American word to me. Same with 'Brownstone'. That is not a term used in the UK.
Yes, front garden is a possibility or, more accurately, front yard, since it is paved, rather than soil and planted.

Thank you for taking the time to make suggestions.

[syntinen_laulu]

'Stoop' and 'brownstone' aren't used in the UK, and I (London born and bred) have never even heard the phrase 'below grade' to mean anything other than 'substandard'

[silentg_canada]

Yes, I included those suggestions even though I knew they were not UK terms, because the OP had not had success with the ones s/he had been using. I thought that although those terms were not UK-centric, reading up on them might have revealed a term for the space underneath that would have been correct or useful as another search term. :)

[cwby30]

Evenin'.

Well, I too think of it as the servants' entrance, and possibly a delivery entrance when there was no mews out back. They have a lot of those in Brooklyn Heights, NYC, and other Eastern cities with late 1800s town homes. Not much of a "garden"!!, but space was/is at a premium.

Thanks again.

Bud

[rmw2007]

Yes, the door is the servants' and tradesmen's' entrance, but the space outside the door that is the width of the house, is apparently officially called the 'area' in the UK. reynardo provided a very interesting link, above.

Thank you for taking the time to make suggestions.

[silentg_canada]

A bit more reading has yielded the term "English basement" to describe the floor that the below-grade entrance opens to.

[rmw2007]

::laughs:: Now that would have to be an non-British term.
Thank you though. I googled it out of interest. In the UK that would be a basement flat or a garden flat.

[dynapink]

I've only ever heard it called "the area". I think the term might be more archaic than regional, though. Never seen one that looked just like those pictures, though.

[rmw2007]

Thank you. reynardo provided a link that supports that, in the first comment.
No, what I actually have in mind is wider than the ones in the pictures. Those are fairly minimal, or look like they've been built in a bit.
Thank you for the confirmation.