Fan service for the piggy and doggie lovers!

And now we realise at last that Willie and her dad speak Czech with each other …

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I had lots of drama with the first panel … V`(oo)´;V

At first, I sketched Willie and Sophie about to enter one of the houses on the left side of the street. I wanted to check some reference photos before inking the background of panel 1, so I inked everything else in this page first. As I then looked at photos and floor plans of terraced houses, I realised that if they had the living room/parlour on their left side when entering, the house would have to be on the right side of the street!!

That’s because victorian terraced houses all look like this:

(Sketch borrowed from the Ulster Architectural Heritage Society …)

When terraces were built on a slope, they would have the back rooms above the yards. So terraces on opposite sides of a street that goes up a hill are mirrored.

Since I had already inked panel 2, it would be a pain in the arse to redraw it. I briefly considered drawing panel 1 looking up towards the top of the hill, but that wouldn’t look as nice, so I just flipped Willie and Sophie so that they now go into a house on the right side of the street. Phew!

Anyway, unlike in the sketch above, many terraced houses are divided into two flats – one downstairs and one upstairs, with separate entrances.
That is also the case with Sophie’s squat. It’s loosely based on the terraces in Bensham, but there are lots and lots of streets like this all over Gateshead, and I’m guessing that at least one of them was totally abandoned in 1998.

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Fun links:

Dene Terrace and its neighbouring streets in Benwell, over in Newcastle, are mostly abandoned today. If you, like me, have a perverse fascination for such things, you can visit the area in Google street view.

And here is a very nice page about life in victorian terraces in the early 1900’s.