ABSTRACT
Right on the edge of Madeley Wood are two single-storey houses (fig.8.1 a-b). They are faced like bungalows of the 1950s, but the mix of waste materials-slag, coal-measure sandstone, broken bricks and tiles-used to build them, the untidy collection of additions tacked onto the back, and their position on the top of an old spoil heap betray a different origin: these were once the poor houses of squatters on waste land, rare survivals in this area. Not far away is a larger cottage, with a careful symmetry in its two-unit plan and one and a half storeys, the façade emphasised with decorative Flemish Bond brickwork: this is an example of eighteenth-century industrial vernacular, typical in the Gorge. These houses stand at two extremes of building-on the one hand, the expedient use of whatever materials came to hand, on the other, carefully selected materials and a recognisable architectural aesthetic.
