@ British people

Most homes built since the mid-19C in Britain are of bricks or more recently, various forms of concrete blocks. Sometimes the outer leaf of the external cavity-walls is of natural or (much cheaper) moulded "reconstituted stone" blocks, essentially concrete with crushed limestone instead of flint aggregate to resemble natural stone.

Or they have lightweight concrete-block inner walls and brick outer, for appearance. An extension being built on a 1930s house in my neighbourhood is of that form, with the external brickwork matched to the original.

The most recent being built completely new though, look as if their external walls, still of cavity form, are of insulation-slab inner leaf with brick outer.


Stone-walled homes last indefinitely, with maintenance. The roof deteriorates long before the walls. The oldest building near me is the local church, built of local stone with timber and lead roof something like 800 years ago. It is presently having its roof replaced. Some of the stone detail work such as window frames and mullions has been replaced over time where the rock has weathered in the natural way.

Bricks too, can last for centuries, though the mortar slowly weathers away. I had to have my house re-pointed because some of the bricks appeared to be held together by fresh air and cobwebs! I think it is about 100 - 120 years old.


Cobbles* are a distinct form of natural stone eroded into rounded shapes by river action, but this is one of several versions of using local stone where that was cheaper and more plentiful than brick. Rural cottages in Chalk downland used not river cobbles but flints, irregular chunks of silica that weather out of some varieties of the chalk and come to the surface of ploughed fields.

There are even still "cob-walled" cottages up to a few centuries old, mainly in the countryside but also in a few Mediaeval to 17C town-houses. The walls consist of a clay-and-lime cement-like material on woven hurdles secured to a timber frame. Their outsides are painted, originally lime-washed, to seal them against weathering.


My first home was built in the 1850s of local limestone, in both ashlar and semi-random forms, with walls some eighteen inches thick.

The old buildings in the SW English city of Exeter are unusual. They are built of a very coarse red breccia (a sort of natural concrete) with ashlar trim made from a pumice-like grey lava. The latter is from the geologically ancient and very long-extinct volcano on which the town stands.


On the whole, old houses are not just abandoned. There are plenty of those about, but far more are still in use by new owners, or have been rescued from dereliction and overhauled to decent condition.


As for demolishing them, any building can be demolished, irrespective of material and design.

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*Cobbles.... Some if the older towns in England have conserved stone-paved streets in the older parts, for appearance. These all tend to be described as "cobbled" but few are cobbled at all. Most are paved with small rectangular blocks called "setts".

We tend to build our houses from bricks and mortar. This is because we read the Three Little Pigs and the brick house didn't get blown down by the big bad wolf 🐺

The only think that I have questioned about American houses is when they build houses out of wood in tornado alley 🌪 I'm like whyyyyy? 🤔

My Mum was born in Wales in a house that was over 350 years old. She went back to Wales 50 years later and the house was still standing although it was no longer occupied as the mines underneath it were settling and had thus cracked the house making it unsafe to live in.

I'm not sure modern houses are any better built, but there is an expectation that older brick and stone built houses will be renovated for as long as they remain structurally sound. Land is far more scarce and tightly regulated than in the USA.

Properties in Europe tend to be small. The houses and courtyards tend to occupy the entire lot and aren’t really modified for decades or centuries.

Weather plays a huge role

maybe because they don't have 🫨 earthquakes

Most of the homes built throughout the UK were built during the Seventeenth Century and are still standing today and have been lived-in by someone ever since their last day of construction 400 years ago.

Homes in Great Britain were built to last from one generation into the next, not be bulldozed when someone got bored with it which is typically the case in American life. Even a brand new house built in the USA today has a predictable shelf life because of the poor building products that are used, which means that the house or apartment building will most likely fall down on it's own if it doesn't get bulldozed somewhere along the line before that happens.

That is why buildings are condemned by city officials in the USA when a structural Engineer has determined that an American building has reached it's maximum life expectancy and is no longer safe to inhabit.